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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Missionary Growth 



rnpal ffllfurrly 



2y 
H. K. CARROLL, LL. D, 




CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
NEW YORK: EATON AND MAINS 



C 3 



USK&tYofQG 7 - 

JUL 29 

/ 7 7 e 3 Z 
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Copyright, 1907, by 
Jennings & Graham 






A FIRST WORD 

* 

This little book is intended to give the 
facts of the missionary growth of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church in the briefest form 
possible. It brings the movement down to 
the end of 1906; but does not undertake 
to describe the new order decreed by the 
General Conference and accomplished 
under the direction of the Commission on 
Consolidation of the Benevolences. The 
Missionary Society was divided, and on 
January 1, 1907, the Board of Foreign 
Missions became the lineal successor, the 
Home Mission interests going to the Board 
of Home Missions and Church Extension 
in Philadelphia. The Cause is one, though 
the administration is separated. The 
Church is entering upon a new epoch of 
world-wide endeavor and usefulness. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Growth of the Missionary Society 

and of Its Home Work, - - 9 

Growth of the Foreign Work, - 45 

Africa, 47 

South America, - - - - 57 

China, 66 

Europe, 76 

Italy, - - - - 84 

India and Malaysia, - - - 86 

Mexico, 106 

Japan, no 

Korea, - - - - - -116 

Appendix, - - - - - 127 



Missionary Growth 

OF THE 

METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH 

A kingdom implies a king and subjects. 
It is therefore of men. The kingdom of 
God is not of earth, but of heaven; not a 

temporal, but a spiritual kingdom. 
Kingdom Men come into that kingdom by 

the regenerative act of God, its 
King. Hence they come under the Divine 
Sovereignty, and live and move and have 
their being in a kingdom apart from the 
kingdoms of the world and independently 
of them — a kingdom whose purpose and 
principles concern not only time and the 
life that now is, but also eternity and the 
life that is to come. This heavenly king- 
dom is a prevailing kingdom. Its history 
has been a history of conquest, and in no 

7 



8 Missionary Growth 

similar period has its spread been greater 
than in the last quarter of a century. It 
is a greater privilege and higher honor 
than any earthly king can bestow to have 
part in the extension of the kingdom of 
God in the earth. 

Growth is asserted only of living things. 

The inorganic elements change much, but 

grow not at all. The kingdom of God 

~ . grows because it is a life. This 

Growth JJ . . 

life is given by the Source of all 
life, and is immortal. How it begins we 
do not and can not know; but its exist- 
ence, its manifestations, its power, and its 
fruits are matters of knowledge to all who 
possess it. Our Lord gave some beautiful 
illustrations of growth of the kingdom. It 
is like the mustard seed, one of the very 
least of seeds, and yet it springs up into 
a tree, so that the birds rest in its branches. 
It is like a little leaven hid in a great 
quantity of meal, which it leavens through- 
out by its mysterious power of growth. 
So, mysteriously and miraculously, grows 
the kingdom of God, and of its increase 
there shall be no end. 



Home Work 



GROWTH OF THE SOCIETY AND 
OF ITS HOME WORK 

Th£ planting of Methodism in the United 
States was a missionary movement. The 
Mother Church in England sent over mis- 
sionaries and missionary money, 
M 1 eth " and the early traveling preachers 
Missionary were traveling missionaries. The 
missionary zeal which inspired 
John Wesley in England likewise inspired 
his disciples in America, and if any body 
of Christians has cause to be grateful for 
such a heritage, surely Methodists have. 
The missionary idea, the giving of the 
Gospel to those who have it not, made pos- 
sible a history of unparalleled growth and 
development. If the Methodist Episcopal 
Church did not organize a missionary soci- 
ety as early as some of the other denomi- 
nations, it was not because it lacked the 
missionary spirit; but because the need of 
a missionary organization to carry on the 
missionary work in which it was engaged 
had not made itself felt. The Conferences 
were virtual missionary bodies, planting, 



10 



Missionary Growth 



cultivating, reaping as extensively as pos- 
sible, and so busy in developing destitute 
home fields that they had no time to con- 
sider the desperate needs of foreign lands. 
The missionary work of our Church may 
be said to have had a definite beginning, 
as a movement, in 1812, when the Gen- 
eral Conference authorized Annual Con- 
ferences to raise funds for "supplies for 

missionary purposes." When the 
r ^on Za " growth of the work and the 

increasing opportunities demon- 
strated the need of the systematic co-oper- 
ation of all the Conferences, the "Mission- 
ary and Bible Society of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church in America" came into 
existence in the year 1819, in the month of 
April. Its immediate purpose was to fur- 
nish the means for enlarging the work in 
fields already occupied, and for extending 
it to remote and destitute places ; but it 
had in view the world as well. The first 
annual report declared that the society was 
not actuated by local interest or local views ; 
but was designed to "carry the light of 
evangelical religion to every corner of our 
inhabited country, whether Christian or sav- 



Home Work 11 

age," until the "whole length and breadth 

of this western hemisphere shall be illu- 

D mined/' and, not forgetting "the 

i urpose 

map of the world/' to the mil- 
lions "in the darkness of heathenism." Its 
great, guiding thought was thus expressed 
in its first address: "Send, therefore, the 
living messenger of God with the Bible 
in his hands, and let that finally decide the 
controversy between the sinner and the 
truths delivered." It would be difficult, in 
the same number of words, to state the 
missionary idea more clearly and definitely. 
The field immediately in view, as described 
by Bishop McKendree, the society's first 
president, was, in addition to Canada, 
"Florida, the State of Louisiana, and the 
Missouri territory," forming our "western 
frontiers." Within these bounds, he added, 
were "many French, some of them friendly 
to our view of religion." 

The treasurer's first report showed re- 
ceipts of $823.04, of which only $85.76 had 
Income keen expended, leaving about 
and Ex- ninety per cent of the year's in- 
come as balance in the treasury, a 
condition which was never again to be pos- 



12 Missionary Growth 

sible in the history of the society. But 
the society was new, and there was no call 
upon it for funds, except "twenty-seven 
cents cash paid for postage of a letter," 
$58.31 for printing, and $27.18 for blank 
books. The largest item shows an appre- 
ciation of an agency which the society has 
ever used with increasing satisfaction. The 
income was in annual subscriptions of two 
dollars each, necessary to constitute mem- 
bership, in life subscriptions of twenty dol- 
lars and from Auxiliaries, with a few in- 
dividual donations ranging from fifty cents 
to one hundred dollars. A quiet and mod- 
est beginning was this for a society which, 
with less than a thousand dollars in re- 
ceipts and with not a single missionary 
the first year, was to have an income 
of more than two million dollars in its 
eighty-eighth year, with nearly five thou- 
sand missionaries at home and abroad, with 
domestic missions co-extensive with the 
United States, with foreign missions in 
every continent, and with a membership 
in foreign countries alone of 265,075, or 
8,194 more than the entire Church re- 
turned in 1 82 1. What hath God wrought! 



Home Work 13 

The second report (1821) opened with 
the statement that "the success of mission- 
ary exertions has answered every objec- 
tion which the ingenuity of men could raise 
against the cause," evidently referring to 
the favor with which missionary enterprise 
in general was regarded by Christian peo- 
ple, and not to what the Missionary Soci- 
ety itself had accomplished. Its 
Sw-piujf income was multiplied by three 
almost, but its expenditures only 
reached five hundred dollars, the surplus 
being greater than its receipts for the year. 
But the General Conference had approved 
the society and its constitution, changed its 
name so as to drop the words "Bible" and 
"in America," and commended it to the 
Annual Conferences. Thus authorized and 
established, it was ready for the serious 
business for which it was organized, and 
its annual reports tell more and more as 
the years pass of the ever-extending work 
in the field. 

The second report speaks of missionaries 
appointed to travel within the bounds of 
Conferences, preach, take collections for 
the cause, and to labor among the French 



14 Missionary Growth 

and the Indians, and hears "a cry from 
beyond the Allegheny, 'Come over and 
help us.' " Speaking of the evangelization 
of the Indians, the report says: "The de- 
sign is worthy of apostles, and it will re- 
quire the zeal of apostles to accomplish 
it." This reads like history; but it was 
written just as Methodism began to make 
history among the aborigines. The pre- 

A R e . diction is ventured that the "his- 
markable tory of Methodism in the four 

rop ecy q Uar t ers Q £ foe world will exhibit 
a success unparalleled by anything since 
the apostolic age." A wonderful prophecy 
this in the days of the Church's infancy, 
and most wonderfully has it been fulfilled. 
The growth of the kingdom of God is a 
mystery and a miracle. 

The third annual report speaks for the 
first time of "our missionaries" at work 
"among the scattered population of the ex- 
terior parts of our country and the aborig- 
ines of our wilderness," and says success 
attended their efforts. The establishment 
of the society was regarded as "a new era 
in the history of our Methodism. Through 
its influence the latent energies of many 



Home Work 15 

an individual are called into action and 
directed" to the work of salvation. The 
problem then is the problem now: how to 
arouse the hosts of God so that every in- 
dividual shall be vitally concerned for the 
extension of the kingdom. 

The next year some account is given of 
the work of nineteen missionaries, one la- 
boring in Mobile and Pensacola, another 
in St. Louis, others in Arkansas and Ten- 
nessee, and four among the Creeks and 
Wyandots. The society expected the mis- 
sionaries to endure hardness as good sol- 
diers of Jesus Christ, to labor, to visit the 
poor and the needy, to inform untaught 

savages, and to give the Word 
Savages °^ ^ e - They were not to seek 

easy places and settle over con- 
gregations for life; but to wear themselves 
out in service. The society had only been 
in existence four years and yet it could 
say that one theory had been completely 
put at rest by the successes among the 
Wyandots. Some had contended that bar- 
barous peoples must first become civilized 
before they could be evangelized. But the 
Indians had been reached by the Gospel 



16 Missionary Growth 

first. The missionaries did not await the 
"slow process of civilization to prepare the 
way of the Gospel; but addressed them- 
selves in the name of the Lord immediately 
to the heart, and poured the light of di- 
vine truth into the understanding, and civ- 
ilization followed as an effect of religious 
reformation." The revival among the Wy- 
andots was one of the events leading to 
the organization of the Missionary Society, 
and forms an interesting and important 
chapter in the history of the Church. 

It would be interesting to follow year 
by year the growth of the Missionary So- 
ciety and the continuous expansion of the 
work; but as the movement gains depth 
and breadth and volume and momentum 
details must be grouped and condensed into 
concise statements. Missionaries multiply, 
missions increase, income enlarges, new 
fields open, and as it was with the early 
apostles in the first century, so it was with 
their Methodist successors in the nineteenth 
century — a work confronted them demand- 
ing all the energy, zeal, and devotion they 
could give, and rewarded their sacrifices 
with a beautiful harvest of results. 



Home Work 17 

From the first the society had broad, 
not to say visionary, ideas as to its work 
and destiny. As we have seen, it had its 
constitution amended by the Gen- 
the S World era -l Conference of 1820, so as to 
omit the words in its title which 
might seem to limit its field of operations 
to America, and held itself in readiness to 
obey the Divine command to go into all 
the world and preach the Gospel to every 
creature. The fourth report of the society 
declared that this " Society knows no geo- 
graphical lines as limits to the field of its 
operations, and no preference as to color, 
nation, or country. It is only limited by 
its means/' This is the spirit of the great 
commission given by the Master, and ex- 
presses its meaning more truly than the 
apostles were able to grasp it even after 
the vision of Peter on the housetop. The 
society was looking forward to the time 
when it could enter the foreign field and 
do its part in the evangelization of the 
world, not doubting that it had the divine 
call and was to be held responsible by God 
for obedience thereto. 

The society's missions at home had de- 
2 



18 Missionary Growth 

veloped rapidly in the first fifteen years 
of its existence. It had a large and con- 
stantly widening field in our own country, 
and might have been tempted to believe 
that there was space enough and need 
enough and work enough here to absorb 
all its energies and all its resources. It 
had been declared in the Legislature of 
Massachusetts that whatever religion there 
was in the country was needed 
Increasing h ere an( j n0 ne of it should be ex- 

by beat- 

tering ported. There were those then 
(and such may still be found) 
who did not know that the more you give 
of the Gospel the more you have, and the 
more you try to hoard it the more your 
store diminishes. "There is that scattereth 
and yet increaseth, and there is that with- 
holdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth 
to poverty." No truth has ever been more 
fully demonstrated than the history of the 
spread of the Gospel has demonstrated this. 
The Missionary Society has been giving 
more and more every succeeding year — 
giving, giving, giving — at home, abroad; 
to its own people, to all peoples ; and yet 
year by year its power to give has in- 



Home Work 19 

creased. The law of increase in the king- 
dom of God is not like the law of increase 
in the material world. A man may give 
so liberally of his worldly goods as to im- 
poverish himself ; but the law of love, which 
is the law of the kingdom of heaven, allows 
unlimited giving and rewards the giver 
with increase of store. 

Before it sent its first missionaries abroad 
the society had taken up work among the 
Indians, the negroes, and the French, as 
well as the English-speaking whites. In 
1833, when the Rev. Melville B. Cox was 
selected for the Liberia Mission in Africa, 
there were eleven missions to the Indians, 
including the Wyandots, the Cherokees, the 
Choctaws, the Creeks, the Oneidas, the 
Shawnees, Delawares, Sacs, and others. 
Missions in the bounds of various Annual 
Conferences in Maine, New York, Penn- 
sylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan 
(then a Territory), Tennessee, Missouri, 
Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, the 
Carolinas, and other States are mentioned, 
and a summary shows that during the year 
eighty missionaries were employed and the 
missions reported 8,542 Church members. 



20 Missionary Growth 

There were besides fourteen teachers in 

day schools, with five hundred children. 

Primitive When it is remembered that this 

Travel was in the age before railroads 

Methods 11 j m 1 «i j 

had made travel quick and easy, 
and that the work of the society stretched 
from Canada and Maine to the Gulf of 
Mexico -and the Mississippi River, it will 
be perceived that those were heroic times 
for the missionary enterprise. In 1826 the 
Rev. James B. Finley, missionary among 
the Wyandot Indians in Ohio, visited New 
York with two chiefs of the tribe, and the 
Missionary Society took special order for 
their reception. At Baltimore, on the way 
back, Mr. Finley "purchased a span of 
horses and a wagon" to convey himself 
and the chiefs home. By collections taken 
at meetings held at various points he got 
enough money to pay for the team and all 
other expenses, and had, he wrote, four- 
teen dollars left. By the primitive methods 
of travel then in use, the bishops made long 
and laborious journeys, planning to reach 
destitute communities with Gospel priv- 
ileges, appointing missionaries for this pur- 
pose and drawing on the Missionary Soci- 



Home Work 21 

ety for their support. It was by hard labor, 
sacrifice, and heroism that the fathers laid 
the foundations upon which the sons were 
to build so grandly and beautifully, and it 
was the Missionary Society that made it 
all possible. 

The society had to study ways and means 
to increase its funds to meet the demands 
of the ever-extending field. From the first 
it had urged the organization of Confer- 
ence auxiliary societies, also branch soci- 
eties, male and female, each having pro- 
vision for annual subscribing and life mem- 
bers. We speak of our Young People's 
Missionary Department as though it were 
something entirely new. But the idea of 
interesting the youth of the Church in mis- 
sions is almost as old as the Missionary 
Society itself. All that is new about it is 
in the plan. As early as 1824 the Board 
of Managers had a committee to consider 
the matter. This committee reported 
Younger through Dr. Nathan Bangs that, 
People's after conferring with the preach- 
ers, they deemed it inexpedient to 
attempt the 'formation of juvenile mission- 
ary societies. They encountered "a va- 



22 Missionary Growth 

riety of objections which appear to have 
weight against it." But the Board was 
not satisfied, and recommitted the report 
to an enlarged committee, and about a 
year later a juvenile missionary society 
was formed, with a male and a female 
superintendent, and twenty-four members, 
twelve male and twelve female. The 
dues were two cents a month. At the 
anniversary of the society in 1826, Mas- 
ter J. Freeman, who was introduced as 
a representative of the New York Juvenile 
Society, made a short address and turned 
over forty dollars which the boys and girls 
had collected in the few months since or- 
ganization. In 1827 the Board appointed 
a committee to confer with the preacher in 
charge of John Street Church, New York, 
on the subject of "preaching to the chil- 
dren with a view to enlist their feelings 
more generally in the cause of missions. " 
There were also young men's auxiliaries, 
and we read of a cash donation from a 
young lady. Moreover, at that early period 
the monthly missionary prayer-meeting was 
inaugurated. In 1826 it was reported to 
the Board of Managers that the preachers 



Home Work 23 

on the New York Station had consented 
to have a monthly missionary prayer-meet- 
ing on the "first Monday in each 
Methods mon th in the churches alternately, 
excepting Bowery village." The 
Board of Managers appointed a leader 
for these meetings, and directed him to 
read letters from missionaries and take 
collections. This general plan is still one 
of the most effective methods of inter- 
esting our people in the great missionary 
movement. 

The first ten years of the society's his- 
tory was a period of rapid growth. The 
Church advanced from about 241,000 mem- 
bers and probationers to 421,000, and the 
society in its income from $823 to more 
than $14,000, and the disbursements from 
$85.76 to $9,234. In the last year of the 
decade the society's receipts more, than 
doubled. The impulse leading to this in- 
creased giving, it appears, was the state- 
ment in the early part of the finan- 
in Income c * a * y ear ^at the treasury was ex- 
hausted. This led to a plan for a 
number of individual subscriptions of one 
hundred dollars each. But the swelling 



24 Missionary Growth 

income of the society was, may we not 
believe, more largely due to the publication 
of missionary information in The Christian 
Advocate and Journal and Zion's Herald. 
It is an interesting fact that in the eighty- 
eight years of the society, from 1819 to 1907, 
there are only twenty-eight years showing 
a decrease from the preceding year. Three 
of these were due to the division of the 
Church in 1844-47 and consequent loss of 
members, others to periods of general finan- 
cial depression, and many of the decreases 
were small and insignificant: The advance 
from $823 to $2,071,648 has been so steady 
and persistent, as to leave no doubt that 
the Church is consecrating itself more and 
more to world-wide endeavor. From the 
beginning to October 31, 1906, the society 
has received and disbursed about $46,700,- 
000, of which $13,935,156 has been devoted 
to the development of the home field. What 
a magnificent result from so modest a be- 
ginning in 1 819! 

The growth of the kingdom of God, de- 
pendent not alone on His gracious co-oper- 
ation, but upon the efforts of human agents 
and agencies, required changes in the or- 



Home Work 25 

ganization and methods of the Missionary 

Society from time to time, and these 

changes are no uninteresting part of its 

history. In the beginning, when the work 

was limited, the income easily adequate to 

the needs, and the administration simple, 

but little office machinery was required. 

The bishops in the first twenty- 
First Paid r m ii« i j • 

Secretary " ve y ears established missions, ap- 
pointed missionaries, and drew 
upon the society for their support. It was 
not until 1836 that the first "resident Cor- 
responding Secretary" was elected — Dr. 
Nathan Bangs, who had written all the 
annual reports and been a dominant influ- 
ence in the society from the beginning. 
The whole time of one man had become 
necessary, for there were foreign missions 
in Africa and South America, and the cor- 
respondence with domestic missions had 
become extensive. Another step forward 
was taken when the General Missionary 
Committee was created by the General Con- 
ference of 1844 to designate what fields 
should be occupied as foreign missions, the 
number of persons to be employed therein, 
and to appropriate for the support of all 



26 Missionary Growth 

missions, home and foreign. This had at 
first been done by the Board of Managers, 
together with the Corresponding Secretary, 
the Treasurer and the bishop presid- 
ing over the New York Conference; sub- 
sequently the Board of Managers elected 
representatives and all the bishops were 
included with the Corresponding and Re- 
cording Secretaries and the Treasurers as 

members of the General Commit- 

General tee j^o organization could be de- 

Commi^ee vised better fitted for these duties 

than the body thus constituted. 
The bishops, in close touch with the work 
of the Church the world over, the Secre- 
taries and Treasurers, having full informa- 
tion of all the affairs of the society, the 
representatives of the General Conference 
Districts intimately acquainted with the 
needs of the work in their respective sec- 
tions, and the representatives of the Board 
of Managers, familiar with all questions 
pertaining to income and disbursement — a 
body of experts abundantly able to bear the 
great responsibilities committed to them. 
The Board of Managers has been in con- 
tinuous charge of the administrative affairs 



Home Work 27 

of the society from the beginning. Consist- 
ing of thirty-two ministers and thirty-two 
The Board laymen, with the bishops, it takes 
of Man- into consideration at its monthly 
meetings matters relating to our 
several missions ; the raising and disburs- 
ing of the income; examination and ac- 
ceptance of missionaries for foreign serv- 
ice ; support of foreign missionaries ; mis- 
sionary furloughs ; home-coming for health 
or other reasons ; allowances to retired mis- 
sionaries and to widows and orphans of de- 
ceased missionaries ; publications, period- 
ical and tract; the apportionment; invest- 
ments, the granting of annuities and the 
settlement of estates; purchase and sale of 
mission property ; erection of buildings and 
care thereof; and before the Board come 
also unnumbered questions affecting the 
vast interests of the society. The few de- 
tails of management have multiplied and 
multiplied so that a large force of men in 
office and in field is required to conduct 
the business of the society, and the demands 
of the fields have become so importunate 
that new methods to arouse the Church are 
required. No better plan could be thought 



28 Missionary Growth 

of in 1845, we are tQ ld> than that adopted 
and recommended by the General Confer- 
ence of 1844, which was a penny a week. 
Long ago the Woman's Foreign Mission- 
ary Society adopted as a watchword two 
cents a week and a prayer. And yet a 
penny a week from every communicant 
would yield nearly as much as the society 
is receiving, exclusive of special gifts. 

Out of the wonderful results in our for- 
eign and home fields grew the necessity 
for a more rapid advance in the income of 
the society, and for this purpose the Open 
Door Emergency Commission was created 
in 1902. By the appointment of field sec- 
retaries to organize and conduct campaigns 
of missionary education, the holding of mis- 
sionary conventions, and the preparation 
of attractive missionary literature, it has 
profoundly stirred the Church, and won- 
derfully increased the missionary collec- 
tion. The development of the work among 
the young people in Epworth League, in 
college, and in Sunday-school, by mission- 
study classes and other means, has also 
been a feature of the society's recent his- 
tory. Add to these agencies the World- 



Home Work 29 

Wide Missions, which in character and ap- 
pearance has no superior, and whose circu- 
lation has reached the enormous 
Agendes anc * unparalleled figure of 400,000 
monthly, requiring twenty-six tons 
of paper for a single issue. Contrast this 
with the Missionary Advocate, which suc- 
ceeded Missionary Notices in 1845. The 
society was greatly encouraged with its list 
of twelve thousand subscribers. Consider 
also the society's tract literature, vastly im- 
proved and enlarged, and with all these 
agencies in view some idea may be ob- 
tained of the growth of the business of the 
society. 

The finances have reached well up into 
the millions. Including the total net in- 
come of the society in 1906 — $2,071,648 — 
Financial which was handled twice, once in 
Transac- receiving and again in paying out, 
the transactions involved in an an- 
nuity account aggregating $860,000, pur- 
chases on account of missionaries, and other 
items of business, it will appear that the 
business transactions of the society for the 
fiscal year 1905-6 reached an aggregate of 
fully $5,000,000, or upward of $16,600 a 



30 Missionary Growth 

day, counting three hundred business days 
in a year. This vast volume of business 
was safely and effectively handled at a total 
cost for administration of 2.5 per cent of 
the income, and for expenses of the Open 
Door Commission, including the support 
of the field secretaries, together with the 
cost of publications and other expenses 
properly chargeable as expenses of collec- 
tion, 5.1 per cent of the income, or in all 
7.6 cents paid out of every dollar 
Expanses ^ or expenses of collection and ad- 
ministration, showing that the so- 
ciety is both wisely and economically man- 
aged. The contrast between the present 
business of the society and that of 1858 
is very striking. Then Dr. J. P. Durbin 
wrote that only one regular officer of the 
society was under salary, its Corresponding 
Secretary, "who is allowed a clerk to keep 
the records and to take charge of business 
matters in his absence," and who also 
bought and shipped goods for missionaries. 
The Treasurer was also allowed a clerk to 
keep books and attend to business in his 
absence. The Treasurer got no salary then ; 
he gets no salary now. Instead of two 



Home Work 31 

there are thirty-three clerks, besides sec- 
retaries and editors. 

In the development of the Missionary 
Society no account has been taken so far 
of the organization of the two women's 
T^ societies, the Woman's Foreign 
Woman's Missionary Society and the Wo- 
man's Home Missionary Society, 
each with a large income devoted to the 
general work in which the Missionary So- 
ciety is engaged. Methodist women were 
interested in the Missionary Society from 
the first, and contributed to it both directly 
in individual subscriptions and indirectly 
through woman's auxiliaries. The call for 
woman missionaries for the women of 
India and the success of existing Woman's 
Boards in other denominations led in 1869 
to the organization of the Woman's For- 
eign Missionary Society, to send out wo- 
man missionaries to foreign fields already 
occupied by the Missionary Society. The 
affairs of the Woman's Foreign Missionary 
Society are managed almost entirely by its 
own organization, the General Missionary 
Committee approving its annual appropri- 
ations, and the Board of Managers its selec- 



32 Missionary Growth 

tion of missionaries. The receipts of the 
Woman's Foreign Missionary Society in 
1906 were $616,458, and of the Woman's 
Home Missionary Society, organized in 
1 88 1, $399,164. Adding these sums to the 
income of the Missionary Society, we have 
a grand total of $3,087,270 raised in the 
Methodist Episcopal Church in that year 
for the missionary cause, not including the 
amounts contributed to city missionary or- 
ganizations. The aggregate for all would 
certainly not fall below $3,250,000, a colos- 
sal sum, looked at from the standpoint of 
the givers, but small, indeed, measured by 
the world's great need. 

How the results in the home field have 
accumulated in eighty-five years who can 
adequately describe? The history of the 
S cope f Methodist Episcopal Church has 
Home been in part the history of the 
United States. The development 
of the country is without parallel in the 
record of nations. And the development 
of the Church, as the founders of the Mis- 
sionary Society foresaw, eclipses everything 
that has occurred since the apostolic times. 
In that development the Missionary Society, 



Home Work 33 

it is not too much to say, had the leading 
part. Even in the early years of the soci- 
ety it was acknowledged that without its 
aid preachers could not have been sent into 
the wilderness and destitute places and 
maintained ; the extensive work among the 
Indians and negroes must have been in 
large part left undone, while even a begin- 
ning among foreign-speaking peoples could 
hardly have been made. Year by year saw 
an increase in the amounts which the bish- 
ops were notified they could draw for the 
missions in various parts of the country, so 
that in the year when our first foreign mis- 
sion was founded, 1833, $20,356 was dis- 
bursed from the society's treasury, all of 
which except $834 for the Liberian Mis- 
sion went to home missions. Touched by 
the spiritual needs of the slaves, mission- 
aries labored for their conversion and in- 
struction throughout the South. Encour- 
Indians a g" e d by the results accomplished 
and among various tribes of Indians, 
the society sought to do its duty 
to the pagan red men, employing thirty mis- 
sionaries among them in 1833, an( ^ ready 
to do more. Some of the missionaries were 
3 



34 Missionary Growth 

even then west of the Mississippi, and a 
visit of Flathead Indians from the Far 
West, "through the wilderness to St. 
Louis,' 7 awakened the hope that erelong 
the society would have a mission among 
these "simple sons of nature" "beyond the 
Rocky Mountains." While manifesting 
zeal for the African slaves and the aborig- 
ines, the society declared that "as all souls 
are alike precious in the sight of God," 
the salvation of the destitute white people 
of "the poorer settlements and villages" is 
equally an object of Christian charity and 
missionary effort. Aided by the funds of 
the society the preacher went to and with 
the settler everywhere. To make the most 
of his opportunities, he confined himself 
not to one place or station, but traveled over 
large circuits and had many preaching 
places. 

The hope expressed in 1833 of a mission 
among the Flathead Indians was realized 

next year, when Jason and Daniel 
Oregon Lee were appointed and started on 

the long journey in April, writing 
of their progress from "the Rocky Moun- 
tains" in June and July, and arriving at 



Home Work 35 

Fort Vancouver, at the mouth of the Co- 
lumbia River, in September, 1834. On the 
following Sunday Jason Lee preached the 
first sermon ever heard "in that part of the 
country west of the Rocky Mountains." 
They settled finally on the Willamette River, 
about sixty miles from Fort Vancouver, 
and there, singularly enough, they had 
"three Japanese youth" under their instruc- 
tion. These Asiatics had been shipwrecked 
and made captives, and afterward redeemed 
by a sea captain. The work of the Lees 
in Oregon is important, as they were the 
first missionaries in that territory, and were 
highly instrumental in saving that immense 
and valuable section from being annexed 
to Canada, through the influence of the 
Hudson Bay Company. As indicating the 
formidable character of the overland jour- 
ney to Oregon in those times, it may be 
stated that re-enforcements for the Oregon 
Mission were sent by ship from Boston, 
via the Sandwich Islands, the passage re- 
quiring ten months. Both the Oregon and 
Texas Missions appear with all the Indian 
Missions under the head of "Aboriginal and 
foreign missions." The Pacific Coast was 



36 Missionary Growth 

then much farther away from New York 
than Europe. When Jason Lee returned 
Oregon *° New York for additional re- 
Foreign enforcements he was said to have 

Territory ^^ ^ ^ ^.^ g^^, The 

Board not only sent out six missionary fam- 
ilies, but also a company of settlers, in- 
cluding mechanics, farmers, blacksmiths, 
etc., and their families and five woman 
teachers. Thus did the Missionary Society 
help to reclaim the wilderness and lay foun- 
dations for the future States. 

The zeal of the Church for the conver- 
sion of the Indians was kept alive for many 
years by encouraging results. The work 
spread from tribe to tribe until in 
Division t h e year igA? when an Indian 

of Indian f ^ r 111 

Work Mission Conference had been or- 
ganized, there were 4,339 mem- 
bers and probationers, of whom 3,557 were 
in the Indian Conference, including Choc- 
taws, Cherokees, Creeks, and Wyandots, 
and the rest in Rock River, Michigan, 
Oneida, Holston, and Mississippi Confer- 
ences. By the separation the Indian Mis- 
sion Conference, with the Indian missions 
in the Holston and Mississippi Conferences, 



Home Work 37 

went to the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
South, leaving to our society only 640 In- 
dian members. The annual appropriation, 
amounting to $16,340 in 1855, dwindled to 
$4,150 in 1875 n tne Period of allotment 
of Indian agencies to the religious denomi- 
nations), to be gradually increased to $10,- 
324 in 1906. While not denying the duty of 
preaching the Gospel to the pagan aborig- 
ines within the borders of our own country, 
the Church for many years has shown but 
little zeal in its Indian missions. Most of 
the tribes are divided and scattered, making 
it difficult to reach them. The number of 
Indian communicants has varied but little 
in the last quarter of a century, standing 
on the average at about 1,700. 

In the early reports of the society fre- 
quent mention was made of missions among 
the slaves. In 1837 these mis- 
the Slaves sions were classified under a dis- 
tinct head as "missions for people 
of color," and this sentence appears im- 
mediately under it : 

"From the commencement of the Meth- 
odist ministry in this country, it has paid 
particular attention to the slaves and the 



38 Missionary Growth 

free people of color, even at the time when 
none else seemed to 'care for their souls/ 
And such has been the success which has 
accompanied their labors that there are now 
in the communion of the Church, princi- 
pally in the Southern and Southwestern 
States, not less than eighty-two thousand/' 
As the total membership of the Church 
in that year was about 653,000, negroes con- 
stituted one-eighth thereof. The report 
adds that the missionaries by their generous 
devotion to the service have won "the con- 
fidence of the Southern planters and con- 
vinced the slaves themselves that they are 
their best friends/' When the Church was 
divided after the General Conference of 
1844, most of the slaves naturally retained 
connection with the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, South, by which they were sepa- 
rately reported for many years. After the 
Civil War the Methodist Episcopal Church 
entered the South, and the large colored 
membership of the Southern Church, 207,- 
766, was rapidly reduced to 78,742. Those 
remaining in the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, South, in 1870 were organized into 
the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. 



Home Work 39 

Thousands had come into our own Church, 
and in the forty years which have now 
elapsed since the Civil War, a wonderful 
evangelistic and educational work has been 
wrought by the Missionary and Freedmen's 
Aid Societies. We have now (1906) 
twenty Annual Conferences and one Mis- 
sion, with more than 286,000 members and 
probationers as the outcome of the first 
missions among the slaves. 

At New Orleans at the close of the war, 
Bishop Thomson organized the Mississippi 
Mission Conference, with twelve recently 
An Ex- liberated slaves, not one of whom 
ample of could write. In March, 1906, 
forty years later, a Missionary 
Convention met in the same city, composed 
chiefly of delegates from the territory of 
the Mississippi Mission Conference, now 
covered by six Conferences, with nearly 
seven hundred ministers and about ninety- 
five thousand members and probationers. 
At the convention there were thirty-six 
papers and addresses, all save eight by col- 
ored preachers and laymen, who treated 
their topics as educated, intelligent, think- 
ing, spiritual Christians would treat them 



40 Missionary Growth 

anywhere. When a collection to defray ex- 
penses was taken many paid by check, show- 
ing that the material progress from the days 
of slavery has kept pace with the mental 
and spiritual. So grows the kingdom of 
God, where the seed-sowing is followed by 
careful cultivation, the Spirit adding the 
increase. 

The Methodist Episcopal is a polyglot 
Church. Its call originally was to English- 
speaking people, and it was many years be- 
p ,. fore it had occasion to preach in 

reculiar- r 

ities of any other language, except, of 
Method - course, to the Indian tribes. But 

ism 7 

when the stream of immigration 
set in from Europe, and Germans and 
Scandinavians and other foreigners became 
appreciable elements in our population, the 
providential plan of meeting conditions 
which European rationalism and formalism 
created in the Lutheran and Reformed 
denominations was made clear to the Meth- 
odist fathers, and the duty of conforming 
to that plan was promptly acknowledged. 
Methodism was peculiar in method, in prac- 
tice, and in preaching from the beginning, 
and was constantly reminded of its peculiar- 
ities, not always in pleasant and compli- 



Home Work 41 

mentary terms ; but its burning zeal, intense 
earnestness, and unequaled activity were 
not for itself, but for the Gospel of Christ, 
which every denomination may have, but 
which no one body of men can monopolize. 
The business of Methodist preachers was 
to preach the Gospel wherever and to 
whomsoever their busy feet led them. 
Moreover, the living fire which burned in 
their souls attracted the curious, who came 
to see and hear, often to laugh and to scoff, 
and were moved to come again with seri- 
ous purpose. A revival was a novelty to 
many, and the cries and tears of mourners 
as interesting as a play. It was this spirit 
that drew a young German physician in 
Ohio to a Methodist meeting in 1839, and 
gave to Methodism Ludwig S. Jacoby, a 
name ever to be associated with that of 
William Nast as a father of Methodism in 
America and Europe. 

William Nast, appointed in 1835 as "Ger- 
man missionary to Cincinnati/ 7 the first of 
The a long line of Methodist workers 
German among the German people, came 
to his victory of faith through a 
long and hard struggle. He had found 
early, he had lost; his university training 



42 Missionary Growth 

had led him to rationalism and unbelief; 
but a humble Methodist preacher, a godly 
Methodist woman, and a Methodist tailor 
showed him the way of salvation, and he 
became an apostle. Nast, Jacoby, Swahlen, 
Miller, and others, supported by the Mis- 
sionary Society, carried the Gospel to Ger- 
man communities, and to-day there are ten 
German Annual Conferences covering the 
country, and paying into the missionary 
treasury five thousand dollars more than is 
annually appropriated to them. 

The Scandinavian work also came into 
existence through the activity of the Mis- 
sionary Society. Olaf G. Hedstrom, a 
Tk e Swedish tailor in New York, con- 
Scandina- verted, entered the ministry, 
preaching in English, which he 
had acquired by twenty-four years' resi- 
dence in this country, preached his first ser- 
mon in Swedish in the Bethel ship John 
Wesley in 1845. From the New York dock 
the work spread to nearly all parts of the 
United States, and our Swedish, Norweg- 
ian, and Danish interests are represented 
by six separate Annual Conferences and 
by districts or churches in seven other An- 



Home Work 43 

nual Conferences. Scandinavian Meth- 
odism is active, prosperous, liberal and self- 
reliant. 

The first missionary receiving support 
from the Missionary Society was sent to 
the French in 1820; but little came of it, 
and our French missions have never been 
very extensive. Those among the Welsh, 
though long in operation, could not become 
extensive because the Welsh population has 
been limited, and Baptists, Presbyterians, 
and Congregationalists, not to speak of the 
Welsh Calvinistic Church, have done much 
for them. 

Spanish missions have been maintained 
for many years in New Mexico and Cali- 
fornia, and since 1900 in Porto Rico, and 
a few Portuguese missions in New Eng- 
land. 

Bohemian and Hungarian populations in 
Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and other 
States have afforded opportunities for mis- 
sionary work, for which increasing appro- 
priations are being made, and note must be 
taken of a beginning among the hordes 
from Poland. Finnish missions are grow- 
ing as Finnish immigration increases. The 



44 Missionary Growth 

influx from Eastern Europe is taking large 
dimensions, and it is apparent that domestic 
missions among foreign peoples are enter- 
ing upon a new epoch. 

The coming of Italians to our shores 
by the hundred thousand has called for 
greatly increased efforts to reach them with 
the Gospel. They occupy extensive quar- 
ters in our large cities and find their way 
into the smaller cities and towns. In the 
extensive work now carried on among these 
hard-working and thrifty people, who eag- 
erly avail themselves of the opportunities 
for education and advancement offered 
them in free America, societies of the City 
Evangelization Union are raising large 
sums directly from the city Churches, which 
are supplemented by the appropriations 
from the Missionary Society. 

In the conglomerate population of the 
United States are Chinese, Japanese, and 
Koreans, particularly on the Pacific Coast, 
A . . pagans whose idolatry and super- 
stition in a Christian land needed 
to be met by the Gospel of Christ. The re- 
sults have not been disappointing. Chinese 
converts on the Pacific Coast are maintain- 



Foreign Work 45 

ing a mission in Canton, China, which the 
Missionary Society has been requested to 
recognize, and a close connection has been 
established between our work among the 
Japanese in our country, including the Ha- 
waiian Islands, and that in Japan itself. 
Our Pacific gateway fronts 500,000,000 of 
the world's population. Shall the ties of 
the coming century be only commercial and 
material? Or shall the Gospel be the bond 
which shall unite the Occident and the 
Orient ? 

II 

GROWTH OF THE FOREIGN WORK 

Those: who organized the Missionary So- 
ciety had in view from the first, as we have 
seen, foreign as well as domestic work. 
Tk e The manuscript minutes of the 
Wider Board of Managers open with an 
address to the Church, setting 
forth the reasons leading to the formation 
of the society, followed by a circular to 
the Annual Conferences and by the consti- 
tution, by-laws, etc. ; then come the min- 
utes, occupying about a page, of the first 



46 Missionary Growth 

meeting of the Board at the Bowery 
Church, April 5, 1819. The address, after 
declaring the purpose of the society to en- 
able the Annual Conferences more effect- 
ually "to extend their missionary labors 
throughout the United States and else- 
where," goes on to say : 

"Our views are not restricted to our own 
nation or color; we hope the aborigines of 
our country, the Spaniards of South Amer- 
ica, the French of Louisiana and Canada, 
and every other people who are destitute of 
the invaluable blessings of the Gospel, as 
far as our means may admit, will be com- 
prehended in the field of the labors of our 
zealous missionaries. To accomplish so 
great and so glorious an object, time, union, 
liberality, patience, and perseverance are all 
necessary." 

In the circular attention is called to the 
General Wesleyan Methodist Missionary 
Society in England, and to the fact that it 
had raised above $80,000 "for the support 
of domestic and foreign missions." This 
example was cited as an encouragement to 
the American brethren. Every successive 
annual report had something to say of the 



Foreign Work 47 

wider horizon, and the society seemed to 
long for the time when it could enter the 
foreign field. It was ready for this before 
the bishops were ready to name the fields 
and could find the missionaries. 

In January, 1825, the Board expressed 
the opinion that the funds of the society 
would warrant the support of a missionary 

to Africa, and instructed the Cor- 
Enougii responding Secretary so to inform 

the bishops and request them to 
appoint a suitable man, and two months 
later similar action was taken concerning 
a mission in South America. But in those 
days suitable men, it would appear, were 
not easy to find; at least no appointment 
was made until eight years later, although 
the necessary funds were ready. 

AFRICA 

Melville Beveridge Cox, a member of 

the Virginia Conference, broken in spirit 

The First badly broken in health, was the 

Foreign first foreign missionary of the 

Missionary foy ^ ^^ Qf ^ ^ ^ 

society, receiving appointment in 1832. 
He had offered to go to South America ; but 



48 Missionary Growth 

the general interest in the work of Amer- 
ican colonization in West Africa doubt- 
less led to the selection of Liberia as the 
first foreign field. Cox was brave and ear- 
nest, had the true missionary spirit, and 
was worthy to be the first of the great 
army of volunteers to enter the foreign 
service of the Methodist Episcopal Church ; 
but if he could not endure continuous work 
in the ministry at home, it was clearly im- 
possible that he could live and labor long 
in the fever-stricken climate of West Af- 
rica. He went out gladly, how- 
Cox ever, expecting to die, and willing 
to give his life for Africa. He 
landed at Monrovia, Liberia, March 8, 
1833, after a voyage of four months and 
two days. In less than four months there- 
after he was in his grave. But even in this 
brief period he had accomplished some- 
thing. He had made plans for the occu- 
pation of the territory, he had brought the 
existing Churches into harmony with the 
Methodist Discipline, he had inaugurated 
a work that is to go on to the end of time, 
and he had given an example of heroism 
which shall inspire missionary lives so long 



Foreign Work 49 

as the call for missionary service shall con- 
tinue. Knowing that his expected death 
would have a discouraging effect, he indi- 
cated before he left home what should be 
his epitaph: "Let a thousand fall before 
Africa be given up;" and who can measure 
the influence of these thrilling words as 
they go ringing and echoing down the line 
of oncoming and overcoming generations? 
Their call to the Church was not disre- 
garded. Five missionaries went out in No- 
vember, 1833, notwithtsanding the death of 
Cox. Of these two died within three 
months after landing, and two others came 
away convinced that the white man could 
not endure the climate, leaving only Miss 
Sophronia Farrington, who, though half 
dead of the fever, would not see the mis- 
sion entirely abandoned. How shall the 
kingdom of God grow where death seizes 
its missionaries one after another and takes 
them out of Church and school to that silent 
place wherein no man can work? And yet 
though missionaries fell Africa was not 
given up. Other volunteers came forward 
and took up the work, and it was not al- 
lowed to fail. For death in a good cause 
4 



50 Missionary Growth 

is not loss, but gain. "God buries His 
workmen, but carries on His work," and 
where martyrs have multiplied, increase has 
come to His kingdom. 

The first foreign mission of the society 

has not been its most successful mission, 

counting converts ; but no one in the light 

Af . of its history would venture to say 

on the that it ought not to have been 

Church s unc [ er taken. It cared for Amer- 

Heart 

ican colonists, preventing a relapse 
into immorality and barbarism ; it helped to 
lay firmly the foundations of the Republic 
and give to the negro savages the example 
of a Christian government ; it reached and 
is reaching and saving surrounding heathen 
tribes. The mission has not realized the 
hopes of its founders, perhaps ; but it has 
held the heart of the Church to Africa; it 
has been the standing protest of Chris- 
tianity against the infamous and inhuman 
slave traffic, and it became the rallying 
point for the Church's new campaign for 
Africa. What it has done neither corn- 
Commerce m erce nor government could have 
not Mis- done. Commerce is a factor of 
•ionary c j v iii za ti on w hen it is Christian; 



Foreign Work 51 

government is elevating where Christianity 
rules its spirit ; but commerce in Africa has 
been dominated by greed instead of grace ; 
and its career has been stained by all the 
crimes and cruelties known to humanity. 
It has counted slaves and rum proper ar- 
ticles of barter, and has been almost en- 
tirely a debasing influence. What gov- 
ernment can do let the record of the 
free and independent State of Congo 
declare. The beneficent aims of its royal 
founder have, thanks to the diligent co- 
operation of the Christian nations, been 
realized in the destruction of the vast 
Wrongs of v ol ume of misery caused by 
Govern- commerce in men; but the hor- 
rible atrocities of the State's 
agents in the pursuit of the rubber industry 
have driven the conscience of the Chris- 
tian world into revolt. Let the poor, hand- 
less natives of the Congo Free State prove 
the powerlessness of government, with- 
out a Christian constituency behind it, to 
lift savages out of their barbarism. Where 
commerce has preceded missions in Africa, 
barbarism, native and foreign, has con- 
tinued to reign; where missions have pre- 



52 Missionary Growth 

ceded commerce and government, civiliza- 
tion has followed. Of this, the country of 
Uganda is a conspicuous example. 

The destruction of the slave traffic ; the 
discoveries of the explorers, led by David 
Livingstone the missionary ; the building of 
roads and the establishment of swift com- 
munication with the vast interior by rail- 
ways and waterways, have introduced a 
new era for the Dark Continent. 

The work in Liberia, beginning among 
American colonists, was extended to the 
natives, and converts from several differ- 
ent tribes were gathered in. But 
Inttfesf ^e Church at home, having -pros- 
perous missions in other countries, 
and receiving no very encouraging reports 
from Liberia, seemed gradually to lose in- 
terest in the mission. The annual appro- 
priations, which had risen above $35,000 
several times in the decade 1850-60, began 
to decline, twenty-five years after the mis- 
sion was begun, dropping down to $2,500, 
and remaining at insignificantly small fig- 
ures until the reorganization of our African 
missions was begun by Bishop Hartzell, in 
1896. That veteran evangelist, William 



Foreign Work S3 

Taylor, a modern Elijah in faith and works, 
who had carried the Gospel to India and 
to the West Coast of South America with 
wonderful results, took his zeal to Africa, 
and on the self-supporting plan received 
work at Inhambane, on the East Coast, 
from the American Board, and on the West 
Coast endeavored to establish a new work 
in Angola and on the Congo, and to extend 
the Liberia Mission into the interior. 
Bishop Taylor's pioneer labors demanded 
an organizer, and Bishop Hartzell was the 
man for the hour and the need. The sta- 
tions on the Congo were abandoned, and in- 
creased energy was given to sowing, cul- 
tivating and harvesting in Angola, Portu- 
guese East Africa, and in the old Liberia 
Mission. 

One form, and a very important one, of 
growth, is that of spreading, by which field 
is added to field and territory to territory 
Entering unt ^ a whole country or continent 
New is occupied. This kind of growth 
has had some wonderful illustra- 
tions in the history of our Missionary So- 
ciety, so wonderful that the only satisfac- 
tory explanation is the leadership of Provi- 



54 Missionary Growth 

dence. How Bishop Hartzell was led to 
plant a mission in the Madeira Islands, off 
the West Coast, is an interesting story, and 
how, visiting the work accepted from 
Bishop Taylor in the Portuguese Province 
of Inhambane, his eyes were opened to the 
opportunity in the central portion of South 
Africa, north of the Boer States, known 
as Rhodesia, is again a matter of mystery 
except to those who see God in history 
everywhere for the purpose of reconciling 
the world to Himself. It was convenient 
for the bishop to make Funchal, capital of 
the Madeira Islands, his episcopal head- 
quarters, and it was also convenient and 
providential that he should become heir to 
a Protestant work needing wise superin- 
tendence, vigorous prosecution and an ade- 
quate support. Hence our prosperous mis- 
sion in the Madeiras. Studying the situa- 
tion in South Africa where the empire of 
European civilization, energy and control, 
was spreading northward, and where the 
D1 . . union of Boer and British popula- 

Khodesia 

tions was only a matter of time, 
and having in view the possibility of the re- 
alization of the dream of Mr. Cecil Rhodes 



Foreign Work 55 

— a railroad from the Cape of Cairo — the 
bishop was led to choose Rhodesia as mis- 
sionary ground, accessible by rail from 
Cape Town and also by rail from Beira, 
a growing seaport two hundred and fifty 
miles north of Inhambane. In this terri- 
tory he has planted an industrial mission at 
Old Umtali, where a gift of a tract of thir- 
teen thousand acres of rich agricultural 
land, attests the Government's interest in 
our work and its desire for the elevation 
of the black man. At Umtali eight miles 
nearer the coast, we have English Church 
and school work. Rhodesia not only is rich 
in agricultural, but also in mining re- 
sources. Its gold-mining fields are among 
the oldest and most profitable in the world. 
Africa is big : its peoples are vast in num- 
ber, various in language, degraded in so- 
cial condition, cruel and debased in char- 
H ow acter — in brief, with exceptions, 
it is to be ignorant, superstitious savages. 
How are our missionary efforts, 
joined with those of all other societies, 
to raise the Continent to European and 
American heights of Christian civilization? 
Not by might nor by power, as men esti- 



56 Missionary Growth 

mate ; but by the mysterious principles of 
growth as manifested by the mustard seed. 
"The kingdom of God," said the Master, 
"cometh not with observation ; the kingdom 
of God is within you." It is a great, silent, 
interior force, with unlimited power of in- 
crease. The alleviating influences of the 
Gospel are already seen in all parts of the 
Dark Continent; little rays of light, signifi- 
cant of the dawn of the great day which 
shall flood Africa with its wonderful beams, 
proceed from many centers. The heart of 
the savage becomes the heart of the trust- 
ing, loving, faithful disciple — the miracle 
going on everywhere in attestation of the 
glorious truth, "Lo, I am with you alway 
even unto the end of the world." A trader 
passing a converted cannibal in Africa, 
asked him what he was doing. "Oh, I am 
reading the Bible," was the reply. "That 
book is out of date in my country," said the 
foreigner. "If it had been out of date here," 
said the African Christian to the European, 
"you would have been eaten long ago." 



Foreign Work 57 

SOUTH AMERICA 

Our twin continent, South America, is, 
in many respects, as wonderful as North 
America. In shape the two are similar, ex- 
O ur cept that North America is broad- 
Southern est in the temperate and frigid 
zones, while South America is 
broadest in the torrid and narrowest in the 
temperate zone. A great range of moun- 
tains forms the backbone of each, and two 
great oceans wash their eastern and western 
shores. Both are blessed with great rivers, 
vast alluvial plains, immense mineral re- 
sources, and almost unlimited room for 
growth. It would seem that as their back 
yards, so to speak, touch each other, the peo- 
ples of these continents should have exten- 
sive neighborly interests and be in cordial, 
not to say fraternal fellowship. Politically 
their relations are friendly and intimate, the 
dominant influence of the dominant power 
of North America being seen in South 
America in the fact that all its governments 
are Republican. European monarchies, al- 
though of kindred race, have been driven 
back beyond the sea, and the two continents 



58 Missionary Growth 

are practically devoted to the democratic 
idea. 

The civilization, however, of the United 
States and Canada differs greatly from that 
of the South American Republics. Whether 
T this difference is wholly accounted 

are the for by the difference in religion, is 
Differences a q Ues ti on upon which there is di- 
vision of opinion. In one thing 
most unbiased and thoughtful observers 
will agree, and that is that the Church of 
Rome, dogmatic, despotic, intolerant, more 
concerned with the observance of its rites 
and forms and requirements than with the 
development of an intelligent spiritual life 
and a sound Christian character, has been 
a hindrance rather than a help to the peo- 
ples and States it dominates. In other 
words, the difference of race does not sat- 
isfactorily explain the difference in power, 
prosperity, and intellectual activity which 
characterizes the twin continents. 

The founders of the Missionary Society 
did not look longingly with bigots' vision 
toward South America as a field ; but with 
opened eyes that saw clearly that the Gos- 
pel as a life and as the power of God and 



Foreign Work 59 

not as a corpse with a beautiful shroud, 
was needed among all Roman Catholic peo- 
ples. Blinded with superstition and preju- 
dice, priest and people have a form of 
godliness without the power thereof; and 
these countries are in effect almost as really 
without the Gospel as those where it has 
never been preached. Let no one, there- 
fore, consider our missions in Catholic 
countries as superfluous or unnecessary. 

The Missionary Society wanted as early 
as 1825 to enter South America, and be- 
sought the bishop to find a suitable man. 
The General Conference itself in 1832 rec- 
ommended that a mission in that field be 
begun, but it was three years later — in July, 
1835 — tnat tne R ev - Fountain E. Pitts set 
sail for Buenos Ayres, touching at Rio 
Janeiro, on the way. He formed small so- 
cieties in Buenos Ayres and Rio Janeiro 
The First an d immediately returned to the 
Mission- United States, and is hardly to 
be ranked as a missionary, rather 
as a sort of advance agent. Justin Spaul- 
ding, John Dempster and Daniel P. Kidder 
were really our first missionaries in South 
America, the two former going out in 1836 



60 Missionary Growth 

and the latter in 1837, Spaulding beginning 
the work in Rio Janeiro, Dempster that in 
Buenos Ayres. The Brazilian mission was 
short-lived, the society, for financial and 
other reasons, determining in 1841 to 
abandon it. There was, in those days, lib- 
erty of worship in Brazil and Argentina 
for Protestants, but only in a foreign lan- 
guage. Our early missionaries were not 
permitted to preach in Spanish or Portu- 
guese, for fear they might tempt natives 
to forsake the Roman Catholic faith. Re- 
ligious liberty has been a plant of slow 
growth in South America, and while the 
Republics now allow it, the prejudices of 
Persecu- tne P e °pl e are still so strong, par- 
tion De- ticularly in the northern countries, 
creasing ^^ ^ e p r ; es t s are able to give us 
no little trouble, instigating mob violence 
and unjust decisions in police and lower 
courts. Gradually there is growing up a 
public opinion, voiced by the more intelli- 
gent and liberal newspapers, adverse to per- 
secution of Protestants, and it is chiefly in 
secret and petty ways that our people are 
harassed. The influence of foreigners, 
who are at the head of the banking, import- 



Foreign Work 61 

ing, steamship, railway, tramway, and great 
agricultural, manufacturing and industrial 
enterprises of South America, has been 
very powerful in liberalizing public senti- 
ment. 

It has required great patience and Chris- 
tian forbearance and tact in making our 
way among the suspicious and hostile popu- 
lation. Protestants and Protestantism, mis- 
sionaries, churches, schools, Bible circula- 
tion, in the view of the masses, are all bad 
and only bad, and many of the priests, 
themselves ignorant, credulous, cunning, 
immoral, work upon these superstitious 
fears to hinder the progress of the Gospel 
in any form. But Gospel seed, sown by 
faithful colporteurs, teachers and preach- 
ers, finds lodgment in hearts prepared for 
it, and springs up unto eternal life. The 
Gospel can not be hid; it must manifest 
itself, and where it is manifested it wins 
confidence and respect and trust. 

The work begun by Dempster in Buenos 

Ayres has developed into the South Amer- 

Buenos ica Conference, which embraces 

Ayres fae three prosperous Republics 

of Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, the 



62 Missionary Growth 

capital cities, Buenos Ayres and Monte- 
video, being the chief centers. Buenos 
Ayres, second to Rio Janeiro when our 
missions were founded, has become the 
largest city of South America, and indeed 
of the southern hemisphere. Its popula- 
tion reaches nearly a million, is cosmopol- 
itan in character and is growing rapidly. 
It is a beautiful, energetic, prosperous city, 
with vast financial, commercial, manufac- 
turing and shipping interests, destined to 
hold the scepter as the metropolis of the 
continent certainly for long years, if not 
for all time. There, as the result of the 
wise plans of Dempster and his successors, 
we have, in connection with the First 
Church, a splendid property in the heart 
of the city, worth $125,000 or more. It is 
known as the American Church, and is the 
foster mother of other Churches, English, 
Spanish, Italian. In the beautiful and pros- 
Monte- perous capital of Uruguay, Monte- 
video video, we have a fine new church 
building for Spanish and English services, 
situated on the crown of a hill, near the 
block where the national houses of , Par- 
liament are to be built and only a block or 



Foreign Work 63 

two from a large Jesuit monastery and 
church. The American Methodist Church 
is a landmark and it has a large Spanish 
congregation, earning thereby both the envy 
and the hatred of its Jesuit neighbors. 

A fine property at Mercedes, in Argen- 
tina, west of Buenos Ayres, given us by 
Mr. Nicholas Lowe, is used as an insti- 
tute for boys ; other schools are maintained 
in Buenos Ayres, Montevideo and else- 
where. The press has also been a valuable 
adjunct of our Gospel work in these Re- 
publics. 

On the West Coast, William Taylor, 
whose faith and works embraced four con- 
tinents, entered upon one of his great cam- 
paigns in 1877 with two ideas in view: 
first, to reach the English-speaking people 
in the ports and chief cities by direct Gos- 
pel preaching ; and, second, to win Spanish- 
speaking natives through the agency of the 
Chile and schools — all on the self-supporting 

Self- plan. Under the auspices of the 

uppor f rans j t an( j Building Fund, which 
had its headquarters in New York, mis- 
sionaries were sent out with the understand- 
ing that the fund would pay their transit 



64 Missionary Growth 

expenses, but no part of their salary. If 
teachers, they got their board, lodging, etc., 
free and a small salary, fixed from time to 
time by the managers of the schools from 
the earnings; if preachers, they must look 
for their support to the congregations they 
served and to the surplus earnings of 
schools and press. The schools, for which 
land, buildings and equipment were fur- 
nished by the fund, were well conducted 
and soon gained a large patronage and high 
reputation. For some years little direct 
evangelistic work could be done in the 
schools ; but their influence was liberalizing 
and helpful to the Gospel work. The 
preachers found it impossible to live on the 
uncertain support furnished them on the 
self-supporting plan, and besought the Mis- 
sionary Society, to which the property and 
work of the Transit and Building Fund 
had been transferred, to change the plan 
of administration. This was done by act 
of the General Missionary Committee in 
1903, which directed that the schools and 
press should be continued on the self-sup- 
porting plan; but that the salaries of the 
preachers as well as transit expenses of 



Foreign Work 65 

teachers and preachers should be paid from 
the annual appropriations. The colleges, at 
Santiago, for girls ; at Concepcion, one for 
boys and one for girls ; at Iquique, for boys 
and girls, have been very successful, sow- 
ing Gospel seed in many hearts, molding 
lives according to the evangelical model, 
and winning converts for the Church. They 
have also raised the standard of education 
in Chile and served as models for State 
schools. The evangelistic work has made 
great advances since the change of plan, 
and the Andes Annual Conference, includ- 
ing both Chile and Bolivia, is energetically 
cultivating a most promising field. 

Dr. Thomas Wood, who had done excel- 
lent work on the East Coast, was sent to 
Callao and Lima in 1891 to begin work 

in the land of the Incas, won by 
Panama the sword of Pizarro for gold 

and for grace. Colportage and 
school work have been the chief methods 
employed in reaching Peruvians. In the 
last few years special attention has been 
given to the evangelistic arm, with most 
encouraging results. In 1905 work was 
begun in the Isthmus of Panama in Eng- 
5 



66 Missionary Growth 

lish and Spanish; and, in the countries em- 
braced in the limits of the North Andes 
Mission, we are doing something in Peru, 
Ecuador and Panama. 

The modest beginning of 1835 has grown 
so that it now comprehends eight Repub- 
lics, not counting Brazil, where we have 
one church and one missionary, and is di- 
vided into three organizations, two Annual 
Conferences and a mission, and the signs 
indicate that a new period of development 
and growth has already begun. 

CHINA 

Eag^r to enlarge its foreign work, the 
Missionary Society had been considering 
the needs of China, and as early as 1835 
it asked the bishops to select a suitable man 
as a missionary to the empire and special 
funds were offered for this purpose ; but the 
opium war, among other things, operated 
as a hindrance, and it was not until 1847 
that the society's first mission in Asia was 
begun by the Rev. J. D. Collins and the 
Foochow Rev. M. C. White and wife. The 
Selected pj ace selected by the Board at 
New York was Foochow, on the ground 
that it was unoccupied, populous, and the 



Foreign Work 67 

political and literary center of an im- 
portant province. The fact that it was 
"inaccessible," that its people were opposed 
to foreigners and that it was the home of 
"every false and foul superstition" did not 
daunt the Committee which recommended 
the selection. Missionary enterprise is not 
determined bv reasons that affect commer- 
cial and other ventures undertaken for 
profit, but by divine command to meet hu- 
man needs ; and the more degraded, vicious 
and superstitious a people are, the greater 
their need of the Gospel. 

There was then, there is now, no such 
aggregation of human beings without the 
Gospel in any country on the globe as China 
Vastness presents. Numbering more than 
of the four hundred millions ; with a 
em history extending back three or 
four thousand years to the shades of 
mythology; with institutions, political, so- 
cial, and religious, inherited from re- 
mote antiquity; knowing little of other 
countries and peoples, , and caring less ; 
proud, in their exclusiveness, of their coun- 
try and their civilization, and looking down 
with haughty contempt on other nations 
and foreign ideas, customs, religions, it 



68 Missionary Growth 

seemed a daring, doubtful deed for two or 
three Americans to go to the Chinese for 
the purpose of revolutionizing their relig- 
ious ideas and proving their learning ob- 
solete and useless and many of their cus- 
toms and methods wrong and harmful. But 
jj ie there is nothing so invincibly con- 
Gospel fident as the Gospel. It refuses 
to admit that any task given it is 
impossible or that any conquest it proposes 
is hopeless, or that final defeat of its great 
plan can occur. Its agents may be beaten, 
put in prison, driven out in violence or 
slaughtered, but still it conquers by their 
very martyrdom. They climb over the high 
walls of China; they master a language in- 
vented by Satan, as an early missionary 
believed, to keep out Christianity; they 
force themselves with gentle insistence 
upon the attention of those who hate them ; 
and, "foreign devils" though they be, they 
undertake to direct the way to God. Sub- 
lime effrontery it must appear to the un- 
willing Chinese, but sooner or later it con- 
quers. 

The faith of the Missionary Society in 
this venture has been often severely tried, 



Foreign Work 69 

but never put to rout. It was hard to get 
a foothold; it was difficult to make a be- 
ginning; converts came slowly; persecu- 
tions were numerous and harassing; mobs 
were murderous and destructive; property 
was hard to get ; converts sometimes proved 
false and faithless ; the health of mission- 
aries failed — the list of obstacles, difficul- 
ties, discouragements, losses, is a long one ; 
but the catalogue of successes is vastly 
longer, and not even the destructive Boxer 
movement of 1900 and its unspeakable hor- 
rors is remembered as a discouragement, 
for the joy of the achievements of several 
of our missions overwhelms all else with 
its abiding and increasing glory. 

The question has often been asked, 

"What kind of Christians do the Chinese 

make?" Some hasty travelers who rarely 

think any personal investigation necessary, 

Chinese nave affirmed with a confidence 

Chris- equal to their ignorance, that there 
are no Chinese Christians ; that 
those who are called converts are not so in 
reality, but profess Christianity for the sake 
of the well-paid work which missionaries 
give them, as teachers, preachers, colpor- 



70 Missionary Growth 

teurs and the like; that these "rice Chris- 
tians" are at heart as truly heathen as they 
were before conversion. If the statements 
of these "observers" were well-founded, the 
inference would be, either that the mis- 
sionaries are diligently and knowingly cul- 
* tivating and maintaining fraud, or that they 
are so gullible that the guileful "heathen 
Chinee" easily imposes upon them. 

These world-wise, world-wide sight- 
seers do not now, with few exceptions, 
make such sweeping generalizations re- 
specting missionary enterprise in any coun- 
try. Too much of results is known by the 
general public; there are too many con- 
spicuous examples of the beneficent revo- 
lutions wrought among savage and, heathen 
peoples, as in parts of Africa, the islands 
of the South Seas, New Guinea and New 
Zealand; and missionaries have achieved 
such distinction as explorers, educators, 
translators, makers of dictionaries and 
grammars of unwritten languages, scien- 
tific observers, etc., as well as preachers of 
the Gospel, that it is no longer possible to 
deceive men of intelligence by denouncing 
missions as a fraud or a failure. 



Foreign Work 71 

As to the Chinese Christians many sim- 
ple tests, such as have been applied in all 
countries from the time of the apostles till 
Simple now, prove whether they are gen- 
Tests u j ne or f a j se# Persecution by their 

own countrymen, rejection by their own 
families, commonly follow conversion, and 
are generally sufficient to show whether it 
is feigned or real ; but the kind of witness- 
ing that removes all doubt is that of mar- 
tyrs. In North China the infuriated Boxers 
applied this test to a multitude of native 
Christians and saw them win the martyr's 
crow T n. They killed the missionaries be- 
cause they were foreigners; but the native 
Christians were given the choice, death or 
renunciation of the foreign religion. Few, 
very few, were willing to save their lives 
at such cost; the great majority did not 
hesitate to lose their lives rather than give 
up their faith. On that roll of honor are 
the names of four hundred Methodists who 
did not waver between martyrdom and 
apostasy. Laying down their earthly life 
they received as their reward the life eter- 
nal. 

Connected with the early history of the 



72 Missionary Growth 

Foochow Mission were such men as R. S. 
Maclay, Erastus Wentworth, Isaac W. 
First Con- Wiley, afterward bishop, Otis Gib- 
vert After son and S. L. Baldwin. The mis- 
sion waited long for the first 
convert and was almost overwhelmed with 
joy when Ting Ang was baptized in 1857, 
ten years after the work was begun. Ting 
Ang continued a faithful Christian until the 
day of his death many years later. After 
Ting Ang came many others to gladden the 
hearts of the missionaries. The work was 
meantime spreading, and when the first 
annual meeting of the mission was held in 
1862 there were four appointments in Foo- 
chow and four in country districts. 

In 1867 at Kiukiang, Kiang-si Province, 
by the Rev. V. C. Hart and the Rev. E. 
S. Todd, the beginning of the Central China 
Mission was made, and in 1869 at Peking, 
by the Rev. L. N. Wheeler, the North China 
Mission was begun. The Rev. H. H. 
Lowry, the veteran missionary, still Presi- 
dent of Peking University, went to Peking 
from Foochow a few weeks later, and has 
therefore been in continuous service in that, 
mission thirty-seven years. The mission in. 



Foreign Work 73 

far West China, in the Province of Si- 
Chuen, fifteen hundred miles from the 
mouth of the Yang-tse-Kiang, was estab- 
lished in 1881 by the Rev. L. N. Wheeler, 
who had begun the North China Mission, 
assisted by the Rev. Spencer Lewis and 
the Rev. G. B. Crews, M. D. 

From these beginnings we have the five 
missions of the present: Foochow, from 
which in 1896 the Hinghua Mission was 
Our Five created, Central China, North 
Missions China, and West China. They em- 
brace eight of the twenty-two provinces and 
include such cities as Foochow, Hinghua, 
Nanking, Kiukiang, Nanchang, Peking, 
Tientsin, Chentu, and Chungking. The one 
convert of 1857 has increased to an army of 
28,960 members and probationers, and we 
are apparently on the eve of a great in- 
gathering, the like of which China has never 
yet known. The days of the old exclusive, 
self-sufficient China, hating and despising 
all foreigners and all things foreign, cling- 
ing to her old institutions and customs and 
perpetuating the civilization of a thousand 
years ago — these days are gone forever, and 
a new China is rising, a, China that wel- 



74 Missionary Growth 

comes Western science in place of the old 
and useless classics ; that accepts military, 
civil, political, commercial, industrial, edu- 
cational and religious ideas from the great 
outside world; that introduces the railroad 
and the telegraph, and sends commissions 
to Europe and America to study modern 
life and modern civilization for the benefit 
of the Celestial Kingdom. The inglorious 
end of the Boxer movement, the power of 
Christian nations manifested in putting it 
down and exacting a heavy indemnity; the 
advancement of Japan since she became 
westernized — all these are object-lessons, 
and to-day no country is more eager to 
learn than China. The newspaper is one 
of the greatest innovations. It is multiply- 
ing in every part of the empire with a 
rapidity without parallel, and public opin- 
ion is becoming what it long has been in 
other countries, a real and powerful influ- 
ence. 

The empire is ready for Christianity — 

ready for the Gospel of Christ as the power 

Ready °^ God unto salvation to every 

for the one that believeth ; ready to sub- 

ospe stitute rational Christian belief for 

trust in gods and idols and jealous spirits 



Foreign Work 75 

which must be propitiated ; ready for Chris- 
tian education, Christian literature, Chris- 
tian hospitals, asylums and orphanages; 
ready for the Christian civilization which 
has made Europe and America so great. 
The only question is, whether missionary 
societies are ready to take advantage of the 
moment of China's destiny and carry a na- 
tion of four hundred millions out of hea- 
thenism into Christianity. Our universities 
at Peking and Nanking, our colleges at 
Foochow, Kiukiang and Chentu ; our 
schools of lower grade in all our missions ; 
our hospitals and medical work in Peking, 
Chang-li and Taian-fu, North China, Nan- 
king, Wuhu and Nanchang, Central China, 
Chentu and Chungking, West China, Ku- 
cheng and Yenping, Foochow ; our period- 
icals and the Union Publishing House at 
Shanghai ; the schools and hospitals of the 
Woman's Foreign Missionary Society — -all 
these are necessary and powerful agencies, 
which need to be strengthened and devel- 
oped to meet the demands of the hour. Our 
missionaries, numbering, with those of the 
Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, 
nearly two hundred men and women, are 
scarcely sufficient, with the three hundred 



76 Missionary Growth 

ordained native preachers, to care for the 
natural increase. They can not enter the 
new doors standing open so invitingly. 

The growth of sixty years' effort proves 
that while our missionaries have planted 
and watered, God has given the in- 
crease. What the society has done is a 
pledge of the conviction of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church that the Chinese can and 
must be converted and of its purpose to 
continue the glorious work until the great- 
est empire on the globe passes away as a 
heathen people to be born anew as a Chris- 
tian nation — the most stupendous triumph 
awaiting the Gospel. 

EUROPE 

Th£ planting of Methodism in Protestant 
Europe was as purely providential as was 
its introduction into the American colonies. 
Representatives of those countries in the 
United States heard Methodist preachers, 
Converts were convinced that they were 
Among Im- true ambassadors with the true 
Gospel, and became converts. To 
some of these converts came the call to 
preach, and the result was such evangel- 



Foreign Work 77 

ists as William Nast and Ludwig S. Ja- 
coby among the German immigrants, and 
Olaf G. Hedstrom, Olaf P. Petersen, J. P. 
Larsson, and C. Willerup among the Nor- 
wegians and Swedes. The natural result 
was an extended revival among these for- 
eign peoples. 

One of the peculiarities of the Gospel is 
that it can not be hid. Those who have it, 
not only manifest it in their lives, but have 
a consuming desire to tell of it — a fact 
characteristic of the Christians of the apos- 
tolic age, who as "they were all scattered 
abroad" by persecution "went everywhere 
preaching the Word ;" and of those of these 
times, the Methodists, who encourage and 
develop heart testimonies. 

Converts in America, therefore, wrote to 
relatives and friends in the old country 
about the happy experience into which they 
Germany had come, and not a few went 
and Scan- back on a visit to carry the glad 
news and scatter the good seed. 
Out of this state of things grew our mis- 
sions to Protestant Europe. Ludwig S. 
Jacoby, sent to Germany in 1849, founded 
the mission in that country ; Olaf P. Peter- 



78 Missionary Growth 

sen, in 1853, carried the Gospel, with a soul 
kindled by Methodist fire, to Norway; J. 
P. Larsson, the same year, to Sweden; and 
Christian Willerup, superintendent of our 
Scandinavian Missions, opened the work in 
Denmark in 1857. It was on this wise that 
Methodism was introduced into Northern 
Europe, by European converts from the 
United States. Though these converts 
were sent by the Missionary Society and 
were therefore missionaries, they were not 
to the peoples among whom they labored 
foreign missionaries. They had a right to 
go to their own countries with their new 
and happy religious experiences, and the 
Missionary Society in sending them can not 
be justly charged with violation of denom- 
inational comity toward the Reformed and 
Lutheran Churches. In all these Northern 
countries to-day there is but one man, a 
German, who holds the relation of mis- 
sionary to the society. The ministry is ex- 
clusively a native ministry and Methodism 
is as truly naturalized there as the Lutheran 
and Reformed religions are naturalized 
here. 

The presence of Methodism in those 



Foreign Work 79 

countries, though not welcomed and only 

barely tolerated for many years, has done 

Influence no harm to the State Churches. 

on State It is treated at best as an inter- 
Churches 1 ... i 11 i 

loper, mtermeddler, and pros- 

elyter, and not only bears the contumely of 
those who combine religion and patriotism 
in Church, but it is subject to certain in- 
convenient laws, made to protect member- 
ship in the National Churches. Bishop Vin- 
cent has graphically described the situa- 
tion in these words : 

"We there find a cultivated ministry, but- 
tressed by aristocratic families, the scholar- 
ship of the universities, the prestige of great 
names in literature, science and art, with 
all the prejudices developed by such ante- 
cedents and alliances. Formalism and 
statecraft, even under the aegis of Prot- 
estantism, have their animus and power, 
out of which springs the spirit of opposi- 
tion to the more simple and aggressive 
forms of a protest against their apathy and 
against the worldliness and heresies of 
Protestantism. In these countries where 
the State controls the Church, where kings 
appoint bishops, and where, state treasurers 



80 Missionary Growth 

pay the pastors, we find government re- 
strictions which limit the liberties of all 
'Free' Churches. Our pastors are but 
'laymen.' Our Methodist youth must in all 
cases be catechised and confirmed by State 
clergymen. Our educated young people are 
not permitted to serve as public school 
teachers." 

State Churches must be broad and tol- 
erant so as to include different schools of 
thought. Emphasis must be put only on 
those points as to which there is no differ- 
ence. Forms are maintained, but the spirit 
languishes, and loose views of the Bible, 
disregard of the Sabbath, skepticism and 
worldliness and other departures from a 
living faith obtain. Methodism and other 
Free Church movements, maintaining a 
spiritual religion, have affected the State 
Churches more favorably than the latter 
would be inclined to admit, increased their 
evangelistic spirit and missionary zeal and 
stirred many of them to a new and warmer 
life. 

The outcome of these old world enter- 
prises are annual conferences in Germany 
(two), Switzerland, Norway, Sweden (one 



Foreign Work 81 

in each), and mission conferences in Den- 
mark, Finland and Russia. The work in 
Germany has crossed the borders into 
Austria and Hungary and also north into 
Russia. The mission in Finland, a province 
of Russia, begun in 1883, has been very suc- 
cessful. The sturdy Finns, harassed for 
years by Russian suppression and oppres- 
sion, have come in large numbers to the 
United States, so that our ministers gather 
them in on both sides of the ocean. The 
Czar's proclamation of religious liberty 
throughout the empire and the inaugura- 
tion of parliamentary government open the 
way to extensive missionary work in Rus- 
sia. The opportunity is of incalculable 
importance. In those Northern and Cen- 
tral countries we had at the close of 1906, 
61,445 members and probationers, with 449 
churches and chapels, worth nearly $3,- 
200,000. In the not distant future an in- 
dependent self-supporting Methodist Epis- 
copal Church will be the probable outcome. 
Bulgaria, an ancient Slavic principality 
of Eastern Europe, on the border of Asia, 
was for many centuries under the cruel, 
6 



82 Missionary Growth 

oppressive rule of Turkey. One of the 

happy results of the Russo-Turkish War of 

. 1877-8, forced by the horrible 

Bulgaria • • • 1 t-» n 1 

atrocities in the Balkans under the 
reign of the unspeakable Turk, was its lib- 
eration. Nominally Christian the Bul- 
garians afforded the Moslems good oppor- 
tunity to gratify their fanatical hatred of 
all of the Greek faith and their lust for 
Christian blood. In all the long and bloody 
Turkish catalogue of man's inhumanity to 
Inhuman- man there is no blacker record of 

fiendish cruelty and merciless mas- 
sacres than the Turk has made for him- 
self in the empire he set up in the south- 
east corner of Europe upon the ruins of the 
old Greek power at Constantinople. The 
sympathy of the Christian world has gone 
to the unhappy peoples so unfortunate as 
to be born on Turkish soil and to inherit 
the faith of their fathers instead of that of 
Mohammed; but the raving Sultan, drunk 
with Christian blood, still wears his crime- 
stained crown in mockery of justice and 
humanity. 

Christian sympathy doubtless moved the 
Missionary Society to send Wesley Pretty- 



Foreign Work 83 

man and Albert L. Long to the Bulgarians 
in 1857 that the Gospel might be made 
An Event- known to them in its purity and 
ful History p 0wer# The mission has had an 
eventful history, which is told in outline in 
these headlines in annual reports till near 
the close of the last century : 

"Commenced in 1857; left without a resi- 
dent missionary in 1866; abandoned in 
1 87 1 ; reoccupied in 1873 ; broken up in 
1877; renewed in 1879; constituted a Mis- 
sion Conference in 1892." 

Unable to transfer it or to close it the 
Missionary Society has continued it in a 
half-hearted way, with not enough appro- 
priation to make a marked success possible, 
hoping perhaps that something may occur 
to relieve it of responsibility, or to encour- 
age it to larger efforts. Superintendent 
Count, appointed in 1905, is the only for- 
eign missionary now maintained in Bul- 
garia by the Missionary Society. Native 
ministers have sixteen charges and the mis- 
sion reports for 1906 four hundred and 
thirty-two members and probationers, the 
largest number it has ever returned. We 
are still in Bulgaria, therefore, and it is to 



84 Missionary Growth 

be hoped that our banner will never have 
to be lowered. It is needed there, and dis- 
couragements can not be pleaded in justi- 
fication of abandonment. 

ITALY 

Th£ blasphemous assumptions of the Vat- 
ican Council, creating revolt in the Roman 
Catholic Church itself and offending the 
Infallible conscience of non-Catholic Chris- 
Papacy's tendom, followed by the Franco- 
Prussian war, the withdrawal of 
the French forces from Rome, the down- 
fall of the temporal power, the restoration 
of the papal territory to Italy, and the re- 
moval of the throne of Victor Emmanuel 
from Turin to Rome — this was a series of 
events which made the history of the last 
half of the nineteenth century forever mem- 
orable. The Missionary Society, drawn to 
the country cursed for so many centuries 
by papal dominance, sent Leroy M. Vernon, 
in 1871, to found a Methodist mission there. 
Bologna was first selected as the center of 
the work; but a church erected and dedi- 
cated in the city of the popes itself was 
the beginning of an interest in Rome which 



Foreign Work 85 

soon made the capital of Italy the head- 
quarters of our mission. It was, from the 
Methodism Pope's point of view, a daring and 
m Rome j m pi ous thing to do ; but papal 
curses were as ineffectual in this case as 
in that of the comet, and Methodism was 
planted there to grow and develop and be- 
come one of the permanent features of the 
Eternal City. Its evangelistic, educational 
and publication work are blessing Italy; 
and the contrast it presents to the supersti- 
tious, paganized, petrified dogmatism and 
ceremonial of the Church of Rome gives 
it ten times the prominence that its num- 
bers alone might justify. Our splendid 
building for church, school, seminary and 
press, on the Via Firenze, Rome, and the 
Woman's Foreign Missionary Society's 
gift to the daughters of Italy, the Crandon 
Institute, are centers of light and power. 
An annual conference, with thirty-two na- 
tive preachers, ordained (twenty-four) and 
unordained (eight), nine foreign missiona- 
ries, including five of the Woman's Foreign 
Missionary Society, indicates the force of 
regular workers. The immense Italian im- 
migration to the United States makes the 



86 Missionary Growth 

problem of Italian evangelization one of 
great urgency, and it is being worked out 
on both sides of the Atlantic, which has 
in these latter times become a bridge 
whereon multitudes pass and repass back- 
ward and forward. 

INDIA AND MALAYSIA 

India, ancient, mysterious, multitudin- 
ous India, with its curious little brown peo- 
ples like the sands of the sea for number; 
India, the cradle of the Aryan race, which 
holds the destinies of the world in its 
strong, capable hands; India, with its 
mystic philosophies, its babel of tongues, 
its hoary creeds, its magnificent shrines, its 
strange social customs, its dreamy Oriental 
India and literature — what a country for the 
Christ Oriental Christ! What a field for 
the Gospel which is for "every creature!'' 
It was a great day for India, a great day 
for the world, a great day for Christianity, 
when modern missionary enterprise began 
the work of conquest there. Challenging 
systems of belief founded before the mani- 
festation of Christ, making war on a system 
of mental and social bondage as cruel 



Foreign Work 87 

as African slavery, boldly attacking ideas 
and customs dear to the native heart by 
centuries of inheritance — the handful of 
Christian missionaries seemed the puny 
champions of a hopeless, an impossible 
undertaking. But nothing is so mighty 
as the truth, and nothing so patient and 
persistent under denial, persecution and 
violence. "The eternal years of God are 
hers/' and she can always wait, knowing 
that in the end she must prevail. 

The history of the Gospel in India is 
sublime in the display of these qualities, 
and the results of Gospel work a powerful 
confirmation of the promise of the Master — 
"The gates of hell shall not prevail against 
it." The glory of India is surely dawning, 
and the long black night of error, igno- 
rance and superstition happily ending. 

Among the Christian men who have put 

an impress upon India, there is none 

greater, perhaps, than Alexander Duff, a 

Duff and Scottish Presbyterian, who 

Durbm showed that Christian education 
is one of the most effective engines of as- 
sault upon the fortified walls of idolatry. 
He it was that urged the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church to found a mission in India. 



88 Missionary Growth 

Our missionary managers had already con- 
sidered the project and the energetic Dr. 
Durbin was anxious that the society should 
take upon it the additional burden. Every- 
body knows that William Butler, an 
educated minister from Ireland, was the 
man providentially selected for the great 
undertaking; how he was led to choose as 
the Methodist field, the Province of Oudh ; 
how he began work in Bareilly in March, 
1856, and two months later was compelled 
to flee for his life, before the hordes of the 
Sepoy rebellion; how he welcomed as co- 
laborers in March, 1857, the Rev. J. L. 
Humphrey (who baptized our first convert 
in India and is still living) and the Rev. 
R. Pierce ; how after the mutiny Naini Tal, 
Lucknow, and Bareilly became the three 
centers of the mission; and how the field 
gradually spread over Oudh and the north- 
west provinces. 

The first thought was to found an excep- 
tionally strong mission, with a force of 
a o .. twenty-five missionaries, in a 
Field the small, distinct and definite field, 
T , Flrst . where only one language would 
have to be learned. The original 
field was, according to Bishop Thoburn, 



Foreign Work 89 

about as large in extent as the State of 
Indiana and included about seventeen mil- 
lions of people. But this plan soon proved 
to be inadequate, and was abandoned as 
inconsistent with the law of growth of the 
kingdom of God, which expands by pro- 
cesses not always clearly foreseen by human 
wisdom. Again and again has the Mis- 
sionary Society been led into mission en- 
terprises against its own policy of multiply- 
ing fields unduly; but the indications of 
providence were so clear that mere human 
wisdom was overwhelmed and silenced, and 
sound, common-sense policy gave place to 
compelling faith. God's plan, when men 
are prepared, is to "thrust them out to 
raise a holy people/' as He thrust out John 
and Charles Wesley, and over and over 
again have Methodist missionaries been 
Spread of "thrust out" for this Divine pur- 
the Work p OSC# Our "missionaries," says 
Bishop Thoburn, "were led into fields of 
which they had never dreamed, and into 
kinds of work which they had never sought 
and did not desire." As the force in- 
creased (twenty-four were added in the 
decade 1859-69, and twice as many more, 
not including the women, in the succeeding 



90 Missionary Growth 

decade), city was added to city, field to field 
and province to province. In 1864 Bishop 
Thomson organized at Lucknow the India 
Mission Conference, making three districts, 
Moradabad, Bareilly, and Lucknow. There 
were then 117 Church members and 92 pro- 
bationers, as the result of the labors of eight 
years. The opening of Garhwal, a feature 
of the Conference that year, was due to 
an offer of support by Sir Henry Ramsey, 
a providential indication, and James M. 
Thoburn was appointed to the work. He 
reported that he "devoted his time for the 
most part to talking with the people, in- 
quiring into their religious and social con- 
dition, looking for suitable openings for 
the work, circulating books and tracts, etc." 

Schools, orphanages, and the press were 
features of the work in India from the be- 
ginning, and as the mission expanded, its 

„. . institutions increased, colleges and 

Hindu ,"-'.'., . « , 

Women theological seminaries and hos- 
and the p^als came into being, and flour- 
ishing presses were established. 
The women, through the Woman's Foreign 
Missionary Society, which came into exist- 
ence in 1869, have carried on an extensive 



Foreign Work 91 

and fruitful work in the zenanas, in schools, 
and in hospitals and dispensaries. The in- 
cident which resulted in the formation of 
the society and the appointment of its first 
missionary, Isabella Thoburn, ought here 
to be recalled, as told by Bishop Thoburn. 
While on a village campaign in the Morad- 
abad District he pitched his tent in a mango 
grove. In the top of one of the trees a 
vulture had built her nest, and one day a 
quill dropped from her wings. The mis- 
sionary amused himself with fashioning a 
pen out of it, and then it occurred to him 
to write a letter with it to his sister. In 
that letter, after telling the history of the 
pen, he was led to describe the condition 
of the women of India, and the good which 
could be done by educating the girls. The 
appeal stirred the heart of the sister, and 
she offered herself and was sent to begin 
the good work, the outcome of which is 
one of the wonders of missionary history. 
So the wing of a bird was used to carry 
the divine message. 

The Woman's Foreign Missionary Soci- 
ety has been a boon to the women and girls 
of India, for the elevation- of woman is an 



92 Missionary Growth 

important and inseparable part of the prob- 
lem of the elevation of the race. What 
Christianity has done for the alleviation of 
Hindu womanhood could hardly be ade- 
quately told in the limits of an octavo. 
Only woman missionaries could go to the 
poor prisoners behind the purdah, with their 
womanly sympathy, acts of kindness, words 
of hope, and medical relief; only woman 
missionaries, knowing the horrors of child- 
marriage would, with the courage and hope 
that would not be denied, persevere until 
the needed legislation was granted; only 
woman missionaries, knowing the evils and 
cheerlessness of Hindu homes, could reach 
them with helpful and curative influences. 
In considering the missionary problem in 
India, different in some respects from the 
missionary problem in other countries, two 
The Rural important facts must be borne in 
Popula- mind: First. The three hundred 
millions of India are not gathered 
largely into cities, but are found for the 
most part in innumerable villages. There 
is in British India (exclusive of the native 
States) hardly a score of cities having 
100,000 population and upward, and Cal- 



Foreign Work 93 

cutta, the largest city, numbers only 1,125,- 

000, while Bombay has but three-quarters 
and Madras but half a million. On the 
other hand, the number of villages or town- 
ships approximates half a million. Second. 
The Caste The caste system holds the people 

System Q f fa e var i ous classes in a cruel, 
relentless grip. Fiends from the bottom- 
less pit could not devise anything more sub- 
versive of the divine doctrine of the broth- 
erhood of man, and more effective as a bar 
to human progress than the Hindu caste 
system. There are four principal divisions : 

1. The Brahmin, or priest; 2. The Kshat- 
riya, or soldier ; 3. The Vaishya, or farmer, 
trader, artisan; 4. The Sudra, or servant. 
Caste fixes a man's place and class of work 
irrevocably. If born a Sudra, a Sudra he 
must remain, he and all his children after 
him. He can break his own caste and be- 
come an outcast ; but nothing he can do 
and nothing any one else can do for him 
can raise him to the next caste above him. 
Between them great gulfs are fixed which 
may not be crossed, upward at least. One 
of higher caste may not touch one of a 
lower; may not rescue or relieve him, re- 



94 Missionary Growth 

ceive anything at his hands, or in any way 
recognize him as a human being. Fate, in- 
exorable fate, fixes the earthly lot, as well 
as the future, and to struggle against it is 
futile. 

The life of the lowest caste and of the 
outcaste is the hardest and most joyless, 
and among these classes converts are, of 

-,. course, the most numerous. How 

1 he 

Hopeless beneficent is the Gospel ! It knows 
Lower no cas |- e or birth distinction, and 

Uastes 

comes to the lowest caste or to 
the outcaste as freely as to the priest-caste. 
Christians come from all castes; but four- 
fifths of them are from the lower castes. 
The Gospel breaks the iron bonds and in- 
cludes all, high and low, caste and outcaste, 
in one glorious brotherhood. The Sudra 
may not enter any of the heathen temples 
or pray to any of the heathen idols ; but he 
enters Christ's temples and prays to the one 
Almighty and Everlasting God, and calls 
Him Father. Caste cares not how many 
below it perish of famine and gaunt fam- 
ine's twin-destroyer, pestilence ; but Chris- 
tianity reaches out a helping hand to all. 
By that fact the Hindus know that the 



Foreign Work 95 

Christian's God is a God of love, and not 
like theirs a god of hate or haughty and 
merciless indifference. 

The years 1888-93 were marked by a 
great evangelistic movement among the 
chumars, or leather workers, and the mah- 
Outcasts tars, or sweepers, and shoemakers, 
Become weavers, coolies, etc., really con- 
sidered as outcasts, and thousands 
of them were converted. When asked why 
they became Christians, they said, because: 
"1. We are saved from idol worship and 
many of its customs wmich we know are 
bad. 2. This religion worships God, and 
here we find a Savior of man. 3. Those of 
us who have become Christians have been 
benefited and elevated in every way." One 
of these converts became head master of 
the Moradabad High School; others, leav- 
ing their work as street cleaners, entered 
the theological seminary and became ac- 
ceptable ministers. At first it was thought 
that this movement would prejudice higher 
caste people against Christianity ; but the 
missionaries observed that where low caste 
converts were most numerous, there were 
most baptisms among the higher classes. 



96 Missionary Growth 

Because the millions of India live in 

country instead of city, and by agriculture 

instead of manufactures, and because 

Famines drouth comes and ruins crops, 

and Chris- dreadful famines occur, and mil- 

tiamty n ons ^j e f starvation and the epi- 
demics which follow. There were great 
famines in Madras and in North India in 
1877 an d 1887, again in 1897 and in 1900 
in the northern, central, and western prov- 
inces, the worst of all. The response of 
Christian nations to these calls to human- 
ity, the missionaries serving as almoners, 
has had a powerful effect upon the heathen 
mind. After every famine there has been 
a movement of multitudes toward Chris- 
tianity, and at times it has seemed as though 
heathenism were being shaken to its very 
foundations. There is much to bear out 
the belief that these foundations have been 
greatly weakened, and that the day of 
Christianity's triumph in that stronghold of 
the enemy is already beyond the first flushes 
of the dawn. 

In no one of the missions of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church has the spread and 
increase of the work been more remarkable 



Foreign Work 97 

than in that of India. Beginning in the 

northwest provinces with the thought, as 

Spread ^ as a l rea dy been mentioned, that 

of the it should be confined to one terri- 

Work 

tory and one language, it has been 
extended into nearly all provinces from Pun- 
jab on the north to Mysore on the south, 
and from Bombay on the west to Bengal 
on the east, and across the Bay of Bengal 
into Burma, and southeast into Malaysia, 
and thence into the islands of Borneo, Java, 
and the Philippines — a vast stretch of ter- 
ritory, nineteen hundred miles from north 
to south and an equal distance from east 
to west, exclusive of Burma, with more 
than 300,000,000 population. The India 
Conference of 1873 became in 1876-7 the 
North India and South India Conferences, 
and to these have been added the North- 
west India, Bombay, Bengal, Burma, and 
Malaysia Conferences and the Central 
Provinces and Philippines Mission Confer- 
ences, nine in all, with 132,463 members 
and probationers, and 1,785 native preach- 
ers, and with property, churches, and par- 
sonages valued at $1,867,477, or, with that 
of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Soci- 
7 



98 Missionary Growth 

ety, at $2,458,564. The feeble mission of 
1856 has assumed the proportions of a de- 
nomination, and instead of the one lan- 
guage to which it was expected to confine 
itself, it now carries on its work in from 
thirty to forty languages. Thus mightily 
has the Lord blessed the work of the Mis- 
sionary Society in laying broad and deep 
the foundations of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church in Southern Asia. 

Among the names which will ever shine 
in the history of the mission, beside those 
of Butler, Humphrey, Thoburn, Parker, and 
William others, is that of William Taylor, 
Taylor w j 10 mac [ e j^g impress as an evan- 
gelist upon four continents — North Amer- 
ica, South America, Africa, and Asia. 
Going to India in 1870 he began an evan- 
gelistic work among English-speaking peo- 
ple on the self-supporting plan, in Luck- 
now, Bombay, and three years later in Cal- 
cutta and other cities in the south. At the 
end of six years' labor William Taylor 
left India, and Bishop Andrews organized 
the results into the South India Confer- 
ence, which, with native as well as Eng- 
lish-speaking Churches, now reports more 



Foreign Work 99 

than 3,500 members and probationers, in- 
cluding converted Hindus as well as Eu- 
ropeans and Eurasians. 

The beginning of the work in Burma in 
1879 was on tn ^ s wise. J. M. Thoburn 
had been casting his eyes eastward ever 
since Calcutta became his field of work 
in 1874. He had been invited to Rangoon 
several times, but was not ready to respond 
at once. The result of an appeal to friends 
in the United States for a missionary was 
successful in 1879, and the new man was 
in Rangoon before it was known in Cal- 
cutta that he had sailed. Taking Mr. Good- 
win with him, Mr. Thoburn sailed with as 
little delay as possible. They had no money, 
but got return tickets for a nominal sum, 
and went forth on the Napoleonic principle 
that "war must support itself." He ex- 
pected to secure converts in Rangoon, and 
that they would furnish funds. Revival 
meetings among the English-speaking resi- 
dents were begun the day after their ar- 
rival, the converts were secured, and on 
the second Sunday a Church was organized 
of twenty-nine persons, the number increas- 
ing to fifty in the next three days. Even 

LOFC. 



100 Missionary Growth 

the great organizer was amazed at the out- 
come. "We had gone forth," he said, 
"without a rupee, and had set up our ban- 
ner in a strange land and among a strange 
people, trusting solely in the unchanging 
and unfailing promises, and mountains have 
melted down before us." 

Five years later, 1884, the work was be- 
gun in the Straits Settlements, of which 
the city of Singapore, lying where two seas 

God's m eet, is the capital. James M. 

Call to Thoburn, at that time presiding 
aaysia e j^ er Q f t k e c a i CU ft a District, 

studied the situation at Singapore, in re- 
sponse to invitations to enter Malaysia, and 
as a result sought from the United States 
two young men for the new field on the 
self-supporting plan. At the same time, 
and without knowledge of what Bishop 
Thoburn was thinking or doing, Bishop 
Hurst, on his way to India, became im- 
pressed with the importance of a mission 
in Malaysia, and without a dollar of money 
from any source, and with no authority 
from the society, he determined that work 
should be opened in Singapore. Accord- 
ingly he attached it as an appointment to 
the Burma District of the South India 



Foreign Work 101 

Conference, and appointed to it W. F. Old- 
ham, then on his way back from the United 
States, whither he had gone to complete 
his education, to India, where he was born. 
When he landed he was informed what had 
been done, and readily consented to take 
up the new work, though it had been far 
from his thought. Sailing for the distant 
field with Bishop Thoburn and Miss Battie, 
what was their surprise to be met at Singa- 
pore by a Christian gentleman, Mr. Charles 
Phillips, who recognized them as persons 
he had seen in a dream. Thus was the 
Malaysian Mission providentially begun. 

How Dr. Oldham won the friendship of 
well-to-do Chinese residents and established 
schools and a Church, and how in 1888 
the General Missionary Committee recog- 
nized it as a mission is matter of most in- 
teresting history. The Malays, the Chinese, 
and the Europeans form the chief classes 
of population among whom the mission 
conducts its evangelistic, educational, and 

The Out- publication work. Dr. Oldham 
growth j ia( j sa j ( j t k at fe was w iHi n g to 

work anywhere in India, but it had never 
dawned on him that they "would shoot me 
clear through the empire and fifteen hun- 



102 Missionary Growth 

dred miles on the other side." But he went 
in the spirit of conquest, and that same 
spirit appears to have possessed his asso- 
ciates and successors. A mission among 
the Dyaks of Borneo was begun by Dr. 
Luering in 1891, but was abandoned after 
a favorable beginning had been made, to 
be reopened ten years later in Sarawak 
among a colony of Chinese, of whom six 
hundred were Methodists and needed spir- 
itual care. A mission in Java was also 
authorized by the General Missionary Com- 
mittee in. 1905, we have work in Sumatra, 
and the missionaries are casting longing 
eyes on Anam, Siam, and other fields which 
are ready for the Gospel sower. 

Out of Malaysia has come the fruitful 
work in the Philippines. Bishop Thoburn, 
with the eye of a prophet, had seen this 
The Phil- group, and fully expected that the 
ippmes time would come when it would 
become missionary ground. When Dewey's 
fleet destroyed the Spanish warships in 
Manila Bay, and the scepter over the Fili- 
pinos, so long unworthily held, fell from 
the hands of Spain, Bishop Thoburn went 
to Manila and in March, 1899, preached 



Foreign Work 103 

the first Protestant sermon heard from a 
missionary representative in the Philippines. 
Next year the Rev. Thomas H. Martin, 
the Rev. J. L. McLaughlin, and the Rev. 
W. G. Fritz arrived as Methodist mission- 
aries, followed in 1901 by the Rev. Homer 
C. Stuntz, who became presiding elder of 
the Philippine Islands District of the Ma- 
laysia Conference. 

From the beginning the mission has been 
prosperous. The natives, ground under the 
iron heel of the Roman Catholic hierarchy 

Eager an d oppressed and despoiled by 
for the the rapacious monks, found them- 
selves unexpectedly free from po- 
litical and ecclesiastical yokes which had 
become intolerable, and they welcomed 
Americans, and especially Protestant mis- 
sionaries. Our mission is doing work 
among the Chinese and English-speaking 
peoples, as well as among the natives in 
the Tagalog, Pampangan, Ilokano, and 
Pangasinan languages. The Gospel is new 
to the Romanized natives, and they are eager 
to hear it. The Scriptures are bought with 
avidity and read with absorbing interest. 
At the close of 1906 we had gathered 16,- 



104 Missionary Growth 

133 members and probationers in seventy- 
two churches and chapels, and had a force 
of two hundred and fifty-five native preach- 
ers, of whom three were ordained. The 
work is notable for the degree of self-sup- 
port maintained. Only eight of the native 
ministers are supported from foreign funds. 
The great majority of the preachers attend 
their business callings and give their serv- 
ices to the mission free. Of the churches 
erected, forty-eight have been provided en- 
tirely by the people themselves. The ap- 
propriations from the society go not to 
Filipino work, but entirely for the transit 
and support of the missionaries. The 
Philippines are the most fruitful of all our 
Spanish fields, and have greater immediate 
promise, perhaps, than any of them. 

What a vast field or series of fields 
Southern Asia presents ! In India, includ- 
ing Ceylon and Burma, there are nearly 
The Field 300,000,000 people, to be exact, 
and the 297,938,689 ; in the Straits Settle- 
ments, 272,249 ; in British Borneo, 
1,750,000 (not including the 1,129,899 in 
Dutch Borneo) ; in Java, 28,746,688, and 
in the Philippines, 7,635,426, making an 



Foreign Work 105 

aggregate of 334,768,052, or more than one- 
fifth of the world's population. Only a 
small fraction of these vast multitudes have 
been won by Christianity. From the stand- 
point of mere numbers, the task would 
seem to be too great for human achieve- 
ment. And so it would be if the Gospel 
were no more divine than the Hindu, Mo- 
hammedan, and Buddhist religions. But 
the God of the Christians is greater than 
the 330,000,000 gods and goddesses of the 
Hindus, and one of His zealous soldiers 
can chase a thousand and two put ten thou- 
sand to flight. Education alone is a mighty 
force working constantly for the overthrow 
of heathenism; but the leavening power of 
the Gospel is so great that it is possible 
this century may see the whole mass leav- 
ened. What our society alone has done in 
the fifty years since it began to put in the 
leaven, is an earnest of what is to be done. 
Vast as the undertaking is, if it did not 
stagger the faith of the fathers fifty years 
ago when they sent two missionaries, a 
man and a woman, to face the impossible, 
it ought not to overwhelm the faith of the 
sons, who have such splendid results to en- 
courage them. 



106 Missionary Growth 

MEXICO 

It was to be expected that the Mission- 
ary Society would keep in mind the needs 
of "our next-door neighbor/' Mexico, and 
plant a mission there at as early a date as 
possible. The disastrous experiment of 
Maximilian, for which the Civil War in 
the United States gave full opportunity, had 
ended in the rout of the monarchical and 
ecclesiastical conspirators and the execu- 
tion of the Austrian archduke, and a re- 
public had been established. The time was 
favorable for a wider work than the Amer- 
ican and Foreign Christian Union had been 
carrying on for several evangelical denomi- 
nations. Money had been appropriated by 
the General Committee several years suc- 
cessively, but the enterprise was not actually 
begun until February, 1873, when William 
Butler, the hero of India, laid its founda- 
tions in the City of Mexico, whither Bishop 
Gilbert Haven had preceded him by several 
weeks. 

Mexico as a republic has been blessed 
by those strong rulers, Juarez and Diaz, 
men of great firmness and decision, who 



Foreign Work 107 

held in check turbulent elements and put 

down revolutions with merciful severity. 

~ .. The reforms in law and ^overn- 

Uondi- CT 

tions in ment have been more far-reaching 
Mexico p [iSin those of any other Spanish- 
speaking country. The powers of the Ro- 
man Catholic hierarchy for oppression were 
reduced, religious rights for all denomina- 
tions established, monastic institutions sup- 
pressed, the Jesuits excluded, and the vast 
accumulations of monastic property confis- 
cated. Rights of sepulcher, of marriage, 
civil and religious, of worship, of property, 
etc., are fully secured to Protestant denomi- 
nations. Government and civil law, how- 
ever, can not cure superstition, nor elevate 
the priesthood, nor purify corrupt religious 
practices. Immoral and unprincipled priests 
can easily stir the ignorant and fanatical 
to frenzied and violent acts, and Protestants 
in Mexico have therefore suffered perse- 
cution. Missionaries and native preachers 
were set upon by mobs, and some of them 
were done to death. As recently as 1905 
one of our effective native preachers was 
shot and killed in Guanajuato. Thus it is 



108 Missionary Growth 

that martyrs for the Gospel are made in 
countries nominally Christian, and by men 
who profess to be followers of Christ. The 
conditions created by Romanism in three 
centuries of undisputed sway are aptly de- 
scribed by Bishop Merrill, who visited Mex- 
ico in 1878. He found gorgeous cathedrals, 
but squalid homes ; a rich Church, but mem- 
bers in peonage; pulpits in the churches, 
but never used for the Gospel ; a people te- 
nacious of their faith, but with no intelligent 
apprehension of it ; ready to mob Protest- 
antism, but not to meet for discussion of 
important questions ; assuming to have the 
light of the Gospel, but held in the bonds of 
dark superstition; professing to worship 
God, yet rejecting the Bible as an evil 
book — in short, he found a Church of great 
pretensions, but with little or no acceptable 
fruits. 

The property purchased by Dr. Butler in 

Mexico City is believed to have been part 

of the site of the palace of the Aztec ruler, 

of the site of the palace of the Az- 

ralace . 

of Monte- tec ruler, Montezuma ; in Puebla, 

zuma one f the mos t fanatical cities in 

Mexico, where the Church held nineteen- 

twentieths of all the real estate, the found- 



Foreign Work 109 

ers of our mission purchased a portion of 
the property used by the Roman inquisition. 
Thus properties belonging in one case to 
a pagan monarch, and in the other to a 
paganized Church, pass into the hands of 
Methodist missionaries, come in the full- 
ness of time to seize a falling scepter for 
the all-conquering Christ. 

As the result of thirty-two years of work 
in Mexico, in which schools and press have 
been powerful auxiliaries to evangelism, 
A Gener- we h ave an Annual Conference, 
ation of created in 1885, with thirty mis- 
sionaries, including twelve of the 
Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, 
thirty-three native ordained and thirty un- 
ordained preachers, and 6,521 members 
and probationers, with an excellent institute 
and theological training-school at Puebla, 
and seven other institutions of seminary 
or high school grade, and with fifty 
churches and chapels and thirty-five par- 
sonages and homes, worth in all nearly 
a quarter of a million dollars, with other 
property bringing the aggregate up to 
nearly $450,000. With such a force of men 
and women, and with such an equipment, 



110 Missionary Growth 

what shall hinder the further progress of 
the Gospel? Not "tribulation, or distress, 
or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or 
peril, or sword ;" only lack of faith and lack 
of diligence. 

JAPAN 

Tut same year (1873) that Dr. William 
Butler went to Mexico to lay the founda- 
tions of our mission in that republic, R. S. 
Maclay, of China, Julius Soper, J. C. Davi- 
son, and M. C. Harris were sent to Japan 
for the same purpose. Thus did the society 
plant the standard of the Cross in two 
widely separated fields, among vastly dif- 
ferent peoples, and under variant condi- 
tions, with only four months intervening 
and on equal appropriations. Truly, race, 
color, language, political systems, religions, 
civilizations, customs, conditions are no bar 
to the Gospel of Christ, which is for all 
who have sinned and come short of the 
glory of God. 

It is one of the mysteries which history 
does not explain, why Japan remained so 
long a hermit nation. The people, as they 



Foreign Work 111 

are now known to the world, are so active 
mentally and physically, so quick and eager 
Japan's to l earn > so ' progressive, so ready 
Rapid to adopt new ideas and new 
methods, that their centuries of 
exclusiveness seem hard to understand. 
The advances made by its people since 
Japan's new era began fifty years ago are, 
it is safe to say, without parallel in history. 
They have become a great, powerful, and 
prosperous nation, not only capable of vic- 
toriously defending their own independence 
and national interests against Russia's 
vaster fighting forces and infinitely superior 
resources, but capable of using their suc- 
cesses so wisely as to make secure their 
position as the dominant power in Eastern 
Asia. They not only saved China from 
partition, and Korea from absorption, but 
fixed the bounds of Russia's greed in the 
Orient and earned the right to be China's 
most trusted adviser. Nothing is better 
settled to-day than Japan's leadership in 
the Far East in political, educational, indus- 
trial, and commercial lines ; and in its rapid 
material development nothing is more evi- 



112 Missionary Growth 

dent than its need of Christianity. The hold 
of the old heathen religions has been loos- 
ened, and they are falling away like out- 
worn garments; and a religion that will 
deepen and develop morality in social, fam- 
ily, civil, and business life is the need of 
the hour. The Methodist Episcopal Church 
is endeavoring to do its part in meeting 
this emergency. 

In little more than a year after the in- 
auguration of our mission the first converts 
were received and baptized. Ten years 
Events l ater the mission was organized as 
in the an Annual Conference, with twen- 

Transition , i < c 

ty-one members and fourteen pro- 
bationers, of whom eighteen in all were 
natives. The native ministry has been a 
leading feature of our mission in Japan. 
It is strong, intelligent, self-reliant, and yet 
devoted to Methodism. We have had no 
native ministers who have thought they 
could profitably reconstruct the Christian 
system. Persecution was not wanting to 
make good the prophecy of Christ ; but na- 
tive converts and native preachers bore it 
as true Christians and it helped to spread 
the Gospel. At Kumamoto a Buddhist 



Foreign Work 113 

priest led a mob in storming our chapel. 
He was arrested by the police; but one of 
our native preachers interceded with the 
court in his behalf, and loaned him a blanket 
to protect him from the cold at night. 
Three of his fellow-priests were so affected 
by this Christian act, that they promised 
that there should be no more attacks. Thus 
it all fell out to the furtherance of the 
Gospel. The same year, 1885, the Bud- 
dhist and Shinto priests ceased, by govern- 
ment edict, to have official relation to the 
empire, and practically these religions were 
disestablished. In the same year the Em- 
peror appointed a ministry, preparatory to 
the granting of a constitution and the in- 
stitution of parliamentary government four 
years later, a precedent which the Czar of 
Russia might with great profit to his coun- 
try have followed many years earlier than 
he did. During the period in which the 
national institutions were in the formative 
process there was a sudden craze for the 
English language to be the medium of com- 
merce with other nations, and mission 
schools became very popular, and every- 
body who could teach the foreign tongue 
8 



114 Missionary Growth 

might have as many pupils as he cared 
to take. 

The eagerness the Japanese showed for 
nearly everything foreign, and their rather 
violent changes of thought and customs 
Reaction cou ld n °t continue unabated, and 
of Senti- consequently the last decade^ of 
the century which had witnessed 
such marvelous developments in Japan was 
a period of reaction. Conservative influ- 
ences once more came into ascendency, and 
independence of foreign ideas was asserted 
in behalf of national sufficiency and national 
dignity. The boldest minds did not hesi- 
tate to entertain the idea of a nationalized 
Christianity modified to meet Japan's views 
and made plain and practical by the elimi- 
nation of the supernatural elements. With 
the new century came a better sentiment, 
and the progress of the Gospel has been of 
the most encouraging character. Revivals 
have been widespread, and the fruits most 
satisfactory. Among the student classes, 
in particular, the evangelistic movement has 
won some of its greatest triumphs, and all 
missions have been benefited. 

Our own work, evangelistic, educational, 
and publication, has made a steady advance. 



Foreign Work 115 

We have now two Annual Conferences — 
the Japan and the South Japan, with sev- 
enty-nine missionaries including thirty- 
seven of the Woman's Foreign Missionary 
Society, sixty-two ordained and thirty-eight 
unordained native preachers, 6,382 members 
and probationers, a college of over one hun- 
dred and fifty students, a theological school 
with eighteen students, nearly 2,200 pupils 
in high schools and seminaries, 2,240 in day 
schools, fifty-three churches and chapels, 
and forty-one parsonages, and property 
valued at more than $500,000. 

The latest phase of Methodist Christi- 
anity in Japan is an agreement between 
the missions of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
South, and the Methodist Church of Can- 
ada to unite in forming a Methodist Church 
of Japan. The first General Conference 
was appointed for May, 1907. 

This is the vantage ground gained in 
thirty-three years of missionary enterprise. 

The From it we look back with grati- 
Leaven tude to God for what has been 
accomplished. From it we may 
look forward to a future- big with pos- 
sibilities. Nothing is more evident than 



116 Missionary Growth 

the fact than in Christianizing Japan we 
are not only saving a nation from falling 
into the depths of secularism and infidelity 
as it abandons heathenism, but we are mak- 
ing the predominant influence in Eastern 
Asia a Christian influence. Christians have 
it in their power to furnish the leaven that 
shall leaven the whole lump. It would seem 
to be cruelly wicked to withhold it. 

KOREA 

Kor£a was the bone and battle-ground of 
the Russo-Japanese War. Too weak to de- 
fend itself and hating both of the combat- 
Its New ants, it could not appeal to its hu- 
Overlord m ili a ted suzerain, China, for help, 
and therefore awaited the outcome of the 
greatest war of modern times with stolid 
indifference, caring little, apparently, what 
the outcome should be. It now knows that 
its future, at least its near future, is prac- 
tically determined. It must now look to 
Japan, as it formerly looked to China, for 
guiding orders, and must expect from its 
present overlord a much closer superintend- 
ence. That it will gain in stability of gov- 
ernment, in tranquillity, in the administra- 



Foreign Work 117 

tion of justice, and in industry and com- 
merce, even though it loses to the domi- 
nant Japanese much of its individuality of 
character, is hardly matter of dispute. That 
Korea looks upon Japan as a conqueror, 
and that she has suffered humiliation and 
some degree of oppression as a conquered 
province probably no one would deny; but 
that on the whole conditions and possibil- 
ities and prospects have improved is equally 
certain. 

Korea, known to its people as Great Han, 
and to the world for centuries as the "her- 
mit nation," is one of the smallest, though 
not most uninteresting, of our foreign mis- 
sions. The visit of a Korean Embassy to 
the United States in 1883 drew the atten- 
tion of our Church to the kingdom as a 
possible field of enterprise. Dr. John F. 
Goucher met some of the members, and was 
active in promoting the establishment of a 
mission in that far-away land. Dr. R. S. 
M . Maclay, first a missionary in 
of China, China, then founder of our Jap- 
Japan and anese Mission, an honored servant 

Korea 

of God still living, was sent to 
Seoul from Japan to spy out the land. The 



118 Missionary Growth 

result was the appointment of the Rev. 
William B. Scranton, M. D., and the Rev. 
H. G. Appenzeller as missionaries to Korea. 
They landed at Chemulpo in April, 1885, 
and began their work with little or nothing 
in the way of tools. They had no houses 
and found none large enough for public 
worship; they knew not one syllable of the 
language ; as Brother Appenzeller said, they 
The First "had to make their tools before 
Steps t k e y cou i(j begin their work." But 
they had the Gospel, and there are many 
ways of making it known. One of these 
is by the healing art, found so effective in 
Oriental countries, and Dr. Scranton began 
at once to heal the sick, showing not only 
the skill of the foreign practitioner, but the 
Christian charity of the medical missionary. 
The missionaries, we are told, were "un- 
speakably happy" in taking the necessary 
first steps. The first baptism took place 
some months before either of the mission- 
aries preached his first sermon in Korean, 
which was on Christmas, 1887. The text, 
"Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He 
shall save His people from their sins," al- 
ways and everywhere appreciated, was spe- 



Foreign Work 119 

daily fitting to be the Scriptural authority 
for the first sermon to these ignorant and 
superstitious heathen, for there is no other 
name whereby men must be saved. 

In the development of the mission, which 

has been one of the most successful of our 

entire foreign list, the converts themselves 

Converts h ave been important factors. The 

Good four arms which continue to make 
missionary work effective and in- 
vincible — the evangelistic, the educational, 
the medical, and the publication — have all 
been employed in Korea; but the phenom- 
enal growth has been chiefly due, under 
God, to the activity of the converts. They 
were not only willing to bear persecution, 
and took no credit to themselves for pa- 
tiently enduring it, but a large proportion 
of them became from the first Christian 
workers. They tell the unconverted about 
the Gospel, what it is, what it can do, and 
what it has done for them, and persuade 
others to accept it. They are diligent stu- 
dents of the Word, and get as much train- 
ing as they can in methods of work. The 
devotion of the native preachers has been 
attested by many trials. For his activity 



120 Missionary Growth 

Kim, a local preacher, was arrested at 
Pyeng-Yang in 1894, and put in the death- 
cell. Beaten and tortured, he was ex- 
horted to "curse God and forsake the serv- 
ice of the foreigner," and he would be re- 
leased. Calmly and firmly he responded: 
"God loves me and has forgiven my sins: 
how can I curse Him? The foreigner is 
kind and pays me honest wages : why should 
I forsake him?" His faithfulness won the 
respect even of his persecutors. He refused 
to become an apostate, but was nevertheless 
released. 

Because the opportunities and promises 
have been extraordinary, the Missionary 
Society has greatly strengthened the Korean 
Mission in the past few years, and the re- 
sults have amply justified its confidence. 
Converts are multiplying at an astonishing 
rate. At the Conference held in June, 1906, 
nearly thirteen thousand members and pro- 
bationers were reported. The prospect is 
that Korea's twelve millions of people will 
be evangelized in a few years, and we shall 
see fulfilled the Scriptural prophecy of a 
nation born in a day. 



Foreign Work 121 

How wonderful are God's ways in ex- 
tending His kingdom! What signal tri- 
umphs of the Gospel has He given to the 
World- Methodist Missionary Society in 

wide its eighty-eight years of history! 
ons How has the faith of its founders 
been vindicated ! How have the earnest de- 
votion of its supporters and the zealous 
labors and willing sacrifices of its mission- 
aries been blessed ! Its lines have gone out 
into all the earth. In every continent and 
among all nations it has planted its mis- 
sions, and among most widely diverse kin- 
dred, tribes, and tongues. The spread of 
the work of the society has not been due 
to human foresight, but rather to divine 
wisdom. Speaking of the missions of the 
society in 1858, the Annual Report of that 
year said : 

"They have not originated in meetings 
called to consider propositions for the es- 
tablishment or extension of missions. They 
have all sprung up under the clearest indi- 
cations of Providence. They are offshoots 
from the life and conditions of the Church, 
and some of them are strikingly marked by 
the hand of God." 



122 Missionary Growth 

For some years it has been the policy of 
the society to found no new missions, but 
to put additional force into existing mis- 
sions ; but the calls of Providence have been 
so strong and clear that we were compelled 
to go into Porto Rico, Panama, the Philip- 
pines, Java, and France, and the calls of 
the future will no doubt meet obedient re- 
sponses. God leads, His servants follow. 

If representative converts from all the 

society's fields could be brought together 

to tell what the Gospel has done for them, 

Work in the greatest babel of tongues ever 

One Hun- k nown would be heard. It would 

area and 

One Differ- be a congress of nations and peo- 
ent Tongues pj es f f ar g rea ter significance 

than the World's Parliament of Religions. 
From India and Malaysia alone thirty-nine 
different languages would be spoken; the 
work is going forward in the Philippines in 
eleven languages ; in China in the Mandarin 
and three or four dialects; in Africa in 
seventeen tongues ; in Europe in twelve ; in 
South America in five; and in Japan and 
Korea in two each. In the United States, 
greatest polyglot nation in the world, we 
have within our Church representatives of 



Foreign Work 123 

at least sixteen foreign populations, Speak- 
ing in as many languages, three of which 
are Asiatic and thirteen European, besides 
those who make themselves heard in six- 
teen or more Indian dialects. In one hun- 
dred and one of the wide world's variant 
tongues confession is made to God of be- 
lief in the atonement of Christ and promises 
given of fealty to the doctrines and Disci- 
pline of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 
The vision of such a day and such a 
gathering out of the nations was not en- 
tirely denied to the founders of the society. 

The Vision I n lts fi rst re port it declared its 
of the purpose to carry the light of evan- 
gelical religion into every part of 
the western hemisphere and to the millions 
in the darkness of heathenism; and in its 
second it ventured the prediction that "the 
history of Methodism in the four quarters 
of the world will exhibit a success un- 
paralleled by anything since the Apostolic 
Age." It would be too much to believe, 
however, that this remarkable vision of 
things to be was shared by each of the 
thirty-nine men who constituted the officers 
and members of the Board of Managers at 



124 Missionary Growth 

that time. Was it not rather the vision of 
the prophet, Nathan Bangs, who wrote 
every annual report of the Missionary Soci- 
ety until he accepted the presidency of Wes- 
leyan University in 1841 ? 

The founders of the Missionary Society 

could not have had a faith in its future at 

all commensurate with the reality. God has 

... . done more than their wildest vis- 

Wonder- . M , 

ful De- ions could have conceived. Theirs 

velopment was fa <J a y Q f sma JJ things. The 

possibilities of steam and electricity — of 
travel on land and sea, swifter far than 
flight of bird; of communication by wire 
instantaneous as the lightning's flash; of 
the Aladdin-like development of manufac- 
tures and industry ; of the miracle of Amer- 
ica's growth in power and prosperity; of 
the bringing of the nations together in 
amity and co-operation; of the advance in 
education and the achievements of science — 
these things and things like these which 
have illuminated Christian civilization dur- 
ing the period of the Missionary Society 
with the glow of glory were not seen and 
not anticipated by the fathers of 1819. The 
material, moral, and intellectual develop- 



Foreign Work 125 

ment, unequaled in any previous period of 
the world's history, is not a simple, natural 
effulgence of humanity, but is distinctly 
Christian in its character, the illuminating 
glory of the Gospel, showing what the co- 
operation of the divine and human can ac- 
complish. 

Manifestly greater is the Gospel than all 

the formulations of it, and all the theories 

and discussions drawn from it, and all the 

~ indirect results attributed to it; it 

\jrG3tncss 

of the is a life; it is the life, having the 
Gospel promise of the life that now is 
and of that which is to come. As life, it 
has all the powers and all the possibilities 
involved in the exercise of life and in its 
growth ; and it is simply impossible for a 
finite mind to measure the infinite possibil- 
ities expressed by the word growth, growth 
of the kingdom of God. As the prophet 
said and as Paul has said, even so it is — 
"Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither 
have entered into the heart of man the 
things which God hath prepared for them 
that love Him." And so the kingdom, 
which is established by God, and the law 
of its growth, which is ordained by God, 



126 Missionary Growth 

and the time and manner of its consum- 
mation, which is known only to God, is the 
kingdom of God, whose end is the glory 
of God by the salvation of men. And to 
labor for its extension is to share in the 
mightiest work known in the universe. 



APPENDIX 

I. Summary of Events by Decades, - - 129 
II. Tables Showing Gains by Decades, - 133 

III. Tables Showing Gains of the Woman's 

Foreign and Home Societies, - - 138 

IV. Geography of the Society's Missions, 139 
V. Languages and Dialects Spoken in the 

Society's Missions, - 140 

127 



SUMMARY OF EVENTS BY DECADES 

First, 1819-1828. 

Organization of the society; recognition and 
approval of the constitution by the General Con- 
ference, 1820; increase in the annual income from 
$823 to $14,176; support of missions in Annual 
Conferences, for scattered population of the "ex- 
terior parts of our country," among the Indians 
in the United States and Canada, the French in 
Louisiana, and the Welsh in New York; exten- 
sion of the work to Missouri and Arkansas and 
among the negroes in the South. At the end of 
the decade : thirty-six missionaries, including 
twenty-two among the Indians (four of whom 
were natives). Increase in communicants, from 
240,924 to 421,156. 

Second, 1829- 1838. 

Increase of the annual income from $14,176 
to $132,480; resident corresponding secretary of 
the society provided, 1836; first missionary sailed 
for Africa, 1832, arrived 1833; Jason and Daniel 
Lee went overland to Oregon, 1834; extension of 
domestic missions to Texas, Michigan, and the 
headwaters of the Mississippi; first missionaries 
sent to South America, 1836; William Nast 
appointed as a missionary among the Germans, 
1835; twenty missionaries in foreign field at the 

9 129 



130 Appendix 

end of the decade, and two hundred in domestic; 
communicants in the foreign field, 420; domestic, 
21,393; communicants increased from 421,156 to 
696,549. 

Third, 1839- 1848. 

Decrease in annual income, due to the division 
of the Church, from $132,480 to $84,045; creation 
of the General Missionary Committee by General 
Conference of 1844; Missionary Advocate took 
the place of Quarterly Notices, 1845; foreign mis- 
sion established in Foochow, China, 1847; mis- 
sion established in California, Rev. Isaac Owen 
and Rev. William Taylor, missionaries), 1848; 
Swedish Mission begun by Rev. O. G. Hedstrom, 
1845. At end of decade, 469 missionaries, of 
whom 101 were laboring among the Germans, 
17 among the Indians, 295 in destitute parts of 
the country, 55 in Africa, South America, China, 
Oregon, and California. Communicantsi in do- 
mestic missions, 36,670; in foreign missions, 996. 
Decrease in communicants from 696,549 to 639,066. 

Fourth, 1849- 1858. 

Increase in annual income from $84,045 to 
$255,224 ; foreign missions begun : in Germany, 
1849; in Norway, 1853; in Sweden, 1854; in 
Switzerland, 1856; in India, 1856; in Denmark, 
1857; in Bulgaria, 1857; in Hawaii, 1857; Francis 
Burns elected Missionary Bishop of Africa, 1858. 
Domestic missions begun among the Norwegians 
and Danes, 1849. At end of decade: missionaries 
abroad, 118; at home among the foreign popula- 



Appendix 131 

tions. and Indians, 503. Communicants in foreign 
fields, 2,975; at home, Indians, 1,181; foreign pop- 
ulations, 20,721. Increase in communicants from 
639,066 to 956,555. 

Fifth, 1859- 1868. 

Increase in annual income from $255,224 to 
$598,161; mission in Bulgaria left without a resi- 
dent missionary in 1864; foreign mission estab- 
lished in Central China, 1867; John Wright 
Roberts elected Missionary Bishop of Africa, 
1867; Chinese domestic missions, established on 
the Pacific Coast in 1866. At end of decade : for- 
eign missionaries, 130; domestic missionaries: 
among the Indians, 234; among foreign popula- 
tions., 40. Communicants in the foreign field, 
9,796; domestic, 16,366. Increase in communi- 
cants from 956,555 to 1,225,115. 

Sixth, 1869-1878. 

Decrease in annual income from $598,161 to 
$551,365; removal of Missionary Society from 
Mulberry Street to new iron building, 805 Broad- 
way, New York. Foreign mission begun in North 
China, 1869; South India, 1870; Italy, 1872; Ben- 
gal, 1872; Japan, 1873; Mexico, 1873; Chile, 1877. 
Domestic missions begun in Montana, 1864 ; Utah, 
1870 ; Spanish and English missions in New Mex- 
ico and Arizona, 1872. At end of decade : mis- 
sionaries abroad, 236; at home among the Indians 
and foreign populations, 261. Communicants in 
foreign fields, 27,687. Increase in communicants 
from 1,255,115 to 1,698,282. 



132 Appendix 

Seventh, 1879- 1888. 

Increase in annual income from $551,365 to 
$994>056; foreign missions, established in Burma, 
1879; in West China, 188 1 ; Straits Settlements, 
1885; Korea, 1885. William Taylor elected Mis- 
sionary Bishop of Africa, 1884; James M. Tho- 
burn elected Missionary Bishop of India, 1888. 
At end of decade : foreign missionaries, 269 ; do- 
mestic missionaries among the Indians and for- 
eign populations, 454. Communicants in foreign 
field, 631,295. Increase in communicants from 
1,698,282 to 2,156,119. 

Eighth, 1889- 1898. 

Increase in annual income from $994,056 to 
$1,345,782; removal of offices of the Missionary 
Society from 805 Broadway to new building, 150 
Fifth Avenue, New York, 1889; Joseph C. Hart- 
zell elected Missionary Bishop of Africa, 1896. 
At end of decade : foreign missionaries, 446 ; do- 
mestic missionaries among the Indians and for- 
eign populations!, 566. Communicants in foreign 
fields, 177,477. Increase in communicants from 
2,156,119 to 2,886,389. 

Ninth, 1899-1906 (eight years). 

Increase in annual income from $1,345,782 to 
$2,071,648; Edwin W. Parker and Frank W. 
Warne elected Missionary Bishops of India, 1900; 
William F. Oldham and John E. Robinson elected 
Missionary Bishops of India, 1904; Isaiah B. 
Scott elected Missionary Bishop of Africa, 1904; 
Merriman C. Harris elected Missionary Bishop 



Appendix 133 

of Japan and Korea, 1904; episcopal residences 
appointed for Bishop John H. Vincent at Zurich, 
Switzerland, 1900-1904; for Bishop D. H. Moore 
at Shanghai, China, 1900-1904; for Bishop J. W. 
Bashford at Shanghai, China, 1904- 1908; for 
Bishop William Burt at Zurich, Switzerland, 1904- 
1908; and for Bishop Thomas B. Neely at Buenos 
Ayres, Argentina, 1904- 1908. Foreign missions 
begun in the Philippines, 1899; in Borneo, 1902; 
in Java, 1905 ; in Sumatra, 1905 ; in Panama, 1905. 
At end of eight years : foreign missionaries, 572 ; 
domestic missionaries among the Indians and for- 
eign populations, 677. Communicants in the for- 
eign fields, 265,075. Increase in communicants 
from 2,886,389 to 3,236,661. 

II. TABLES SHOWING GAINS BY DEC- 
ADES 

1. Increase in Income by Decenniad Years. 







Increase Over Pre- 






vious Decen- 


Decennial Years. 


Amount. 


nial Year. 


1819 
1828 


$823 
14,176 




$13,353 


1838 


132,480 


118,304 


1848 


84,045 


48,435* 


1858 


255,225 


171,180 


1868 


598,162 


342,937 


1878 


551,365 


46,797* 


1888 


944,056 


442,691 


1898 


1,345,782 


351,726 


1906 (8 yrs.) 


2,071,648 


725,866 



* Decrease in income by Decennial Years. 



134 Appendix 

There was a surplus in the treasury every year 
from 1820 to 1835, when the first deficit occurred. 
There had been only nine deficits up to 1867, when 
the tenth occurred, followed immediately by three 
additional deficits. From 1875 to 1885, inclusive, 
there was a deficit every year, and from 1885 to 
1906 there was a yearly deficit, excepting ten 
years, including the last five. The largest deficit 
ever reported was $220,634 m 1895. 

2. Increase) in Income; by De)ce)nniai, Periods. 

Income. Increase. 

1st. 1819-1828 $51,054 29 

2d. 1829-1838 462,929 13 $411,874 84 

3d. 1839-1848 1,137,519 58 674,590 45 

4th. 1849-1858 1,920,674 82 783,155 24 

5th. 1859-1868 4,519,754 23 2,599,079 41 

6th. 1869-1878 6,290,419 76 1,770,665 53 

7th. 1879-1888 7,754,715 08 1,464,295 32 

8th. 1889-1898 12,197,813 48 4,443,098 40 

9th. 1899-1906 12,714,491 99 

(8yrs.) 

The increase of the last eight years, if con- 
tinued, would bring the income of the ninth dec- 
ade up to nearly $18,000,000. 

3. Average: Annum, Contribution. 

Highest and lowest average during each 
decade. 

Decade. Lowest. Highest. 

1st. 1819-1828 $.003 (1819) $.033 (1828) 

2d. 1829-1838 $.022 (1831) $.19 (1838) 

3d. 1839-1848 $.078(1845) $.184(1839) 

4th. 1849-1858 $.157 (1849) $.327 (1857) 

5th. 1859-1868 $.248 (1861) $.679 (1865) 



Appendix 135 

Decade. Lowest. Highest. 

6th. 1869-1878 $.324(1878) $.475(1869) 

7th. 1879-1888 $.319 (1880) $.499 (1886-7) 

8th. 1889-1898 $.412(1897) $.522(1891) 

9th. 1899-1906 (8 yrs) J.45 (1900) $.64 (1906) 

4. Increase in Foreign Missionaries. 

Decennial Years Missionaries. Increase. 

1828 None. None. 

1838 20 20 

1848 55 . 35 

1858 100 45 

1868 130 30 

1878 236 106 

1888 269 33 

1898 446 177 

1906 (8 yrs.) 572 126 

5. Communicants in Foreign Missions. 

Decennial Years. Communicants. Increase. 

1828 None. None. 



1838 


420 


420 


1848 


996 


576 


1858 


2,975 


i,979 


1868 


9,796 


6,821 


1878 


27,687 


17,891 


1888 


63,295 


35,6o8 


1898 


177477 


114,182 


1906 (8 yrs.) 


265,075 


87,598 


6. Value of Property in Foreign 


Fields. 


1828 


None. 




1838 


Not reported. 


1848 


Not reported. 


1858 


$3475+. 




1868 


205, 000*' 


• 



* Partly estimated. Note: The last three items include 
value churches, parsonages, schools, hospitals, orphan- 
ages, book rooms, etc. The other, item covers the value 
of churches and parsonages only, -[-Includes only prop- 
erty in Naini Tal, India. 



136 



Appendix 



1878 
1888 
1898 

1906 (8 yrs.) 



454,863. 

2,563,252. 

4,976,103. 

8,i84,735* 



7. Native Preachers and Workers. 



Other 
Decenni- Preachers Un- Native 
al Years. Ordained ordained. Workers. 

1828 None None None 



Total. 



1838 
1848 
1858 
1868 



1878 1248 

1888 353 

1898 726 

1906 (8 yrs.) 958 



411 
1,017 
3>278 



320 
1,510 
3,59o 
4,498 



Not reported 
19 
43 
256 

568 
2,274 

5,333 
8,744 



8. Theological and Sunday-schools and 
Scholars. 

Theo- 
Decennial logical Schol- Sunday 

Years. Schools, ars. Schools Scholars. 

1828 

1838 

1848 19 865 

1858 I 6 47 2,179 

1868 71 4,372 

1878 4 54 547 19,058 

1888 18 258 1,944 112,928 

1898 16 314 4,286 186,579 

1906 26 496 5,552 279,913 



* Partly estimated. Note: The last three items include 
value churches, parsonages, schools, hospitals, orphan- 
ages, book rooms, et<\ The other item covers the value 
of churches and prrsonages only. 

f Includes unordained preachers. 



Appendix 



137 



9. High and Day Schools and Students. 



Decennial 
Years. 



High 



Day 



Schools. Students. Schools. Pupils. 



1828 None. 


None. None. None. 


1818 




11 221 


v) 

1848 




14 260 


T 

1858 




30 921 


»J ••••• 
1868 


4 


52 104 3,591 


1878 


6 


31 *222 *8,200 


1888 


36 


3,564 747 23,697 


I898 


58 


4622 1,139 3*>882 


1906 (8 yrs.) 


137 


15,907 1,841 52,981 


10. Colleges 


and Students. 


Decennial Years. 


Colleges. Students. 


1828 




None None 


1838 




« a 


1848 




ti tt 


1858 




a a 


1868 






1878 






1888 




3 109 


1898 




5 4i6 


1906 (8 yrs.) 




12 1,230 


11. Hospitals and '. 


Medical Missionaries. 


Decennial 




Medical 


Years. 


Hospitals. Missionaries. 


1828 






1838 






1848 






1858 






1868 






1878 






1888 




4 7 


1898 




9 19 


1906 (8 yrs.) 


12 27 



* Includes statistics of India Missions for 1877. No 
figures for that field are available for 1878. 

Note. — The four hospitals in existence in 1888 were in 
Nanking-, Peking, and Tsunhua, China, and Seoul, Korea. 



138 



Appendix 



III. TABLES SHOWING GAINS OF THE 

WOMAN'S FOREIGN AND HOME 

SOCIETIES 

i. Woman's Foreign Missionary Society. 

i. Increase in income in decennial years.. 

Decennial Years. Income. Increase. 

1878 $66,844 



1888 
1898 
1906 (8 yrs.) 



226,496 

360,339 
616,458 



2. Increase in decennial periods. 



Decade. 
1869-1878 
I 879-1888 
1889-1898 
I 899- I 906 



Income. 
$514,706 19 
1,598,414 42 
2,916,278 73 
3,511,498 18 



$159,652 

^33,843 
256,119 



Increase. 

$1,083708 23 

1,317,864 31 

595,219 45 



2. Woman's Home: Missionary Society. 
1. Increase in income in decennial years.. 

Income. Increase. 

$67,523 



Decennial Years. 
1888 

1898 184,450 

1906 (8 yrs.) 399> l6 4 



$116,927 
214,714 



2. Increase in income in decennial periods. 

Decade. Income. Increese. 

1881-1888 (8 yrs.) $281,844 5i 

1889-1898 1,269,021 59 $987,777 08 

1899-1906(8 yrs.) 1,869,544 08 600,522 49 



Appendix 139 



IV. GEOGRAPHY OF THE SOCIETY'S MIS- 
SIONS 

Domestic Missions.— In every State and Ter- 
ritory of the United States ; also in the Hawaiian 
Islands, Pacific Ocean, and in Porto Rico, West 
Indies. 

Foreign Missions. — Western Hemisphere — 
United States, including Hawaii, Alaska, and 
Porto Rico; Mexico, Panama, Ecuador, Bolivia, 
Peru, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, 
Brazil. 

Eastern Hemisphere. — Norway, Sweden, Den- 
mark, Finland, Russia, Germany, Austria, Bul- 
garia, Switzerland, Italy, India (including Bur- 
ma), Malay Peninsula, Borneo, Java, Sumatra, 
Philippines, China, Japan, Korea, Liberia, Madeira 
Islands, Angola, Portuguese East Africa, Rho- 
desia. 

Northern Hemisphere — United States, Hawaii, 
Porto Rico, Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, Fin- 
land, Russia, Bulgaria, Italy, India, Malay Penin- 
sula, Borneo (half north), Sumatra (half north), 
the Philippines, China, Japan, Korea, Liberia, 
Madeira Islands. 

Southern Hemisphere — Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, 
Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, An- 
gola, Portuguese East Africa, Rhodesia, Java, 
Borneo (half south), Sumatra (half south). 



140 Appendix 

V. LANGUAGES AND DIALECTS SPOKEN 
IN THE SOCIETY'S MISSIONS 

Africa — English, Portuguese, Sheetswa, Copa, 
Kimbundu, Tonga, Chicaronga, Golah, Grebo, 
Wissika, Wari, Garraway, Bassa, Kroo, Vey, Ma- 
shona, Machopa. Seventeen languages or dialects. 

China. — English, Mandarin, Fuhkienese, Hing- 
hua, Ingang, Amoy. Six languages or dialects. 

Europe. — English, German, Hungarian, Nor- 
wegian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Bulgarian, 
Italian, Macedonian, French, Russian. Twelve 
languages.. 

India and Burma. — English, Hindi, Urdu, Ben- 
gali, Gahrwali, Gujarati, Telugu, Tamil, Kanarese, 
Gondi, Santali, Marathi, Burmese, Karen, San- 
skrit, Arabic, Persian, Oriya, Panjabi, Pushtu, 
Kashmeri, Thibetan, Nepalese, Sindhi, Bhotia, 
Bhili, Hindustani, Kumauni, Malayalam, Marwari. 
Thirty languages or dialects. 

Malaysia. — English, Tamil, Malay, Hokkien, 
Fuhkienese, Hakka, Cantonese, Hinghua, Tiu 
Chieu, Dyak, Javanese, Dutch. Twelve languages 
or dialects. 

Philippines. — English, Spanish, Fuhkienese, 
Cantonese, Tagalog, Pampangan, Ilokano, Pan- 
gasinan, Cagayani, Ibinag, Tinguiani. Eleven lan- 
guages or dialects. 

Japan. — English, Japanese, Loochooan. Three 
languages,. 

Korea. — English, Korean. Two languages. 

South America. — English, Spanish, Portuguese, 
Italian, and German. Five languages. 



Appendix 141 

United States. — English, Welsh, French, Span- 
ish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Norwegian, 
Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Bohemian, Polish, 
Hungarian, Greek, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, 
Nooksack, Ukiah, Chippewa, Ojibwa, Chinook, 
Klikitat, Potawatomie, Oneida, Ottawa, Seneca, 
Onondaga, Saint Regis, Piegan, Klamath, Yakima, 
Paiute. Thirty-four languages or dialects. 

Summary. — In foreign fields, ninety-eight; in 
home fields, thirty-four; total, one hundred and 
thirty-two. 

Eliminating duplications — that is, counting 
Spanish, Portuguese, etc., only once — eighty-one 
different languages and dialects are used in for- 
eign missions. Eliminating duplications — that is, 
leaving out all languages already counted in the 
foreign field — we have in our home fields twenty 
languages to add to the eighty-one, making one 
hundred and one different languages and dialects 
in our foreign and home fields. 



INDEX 

Africa : Melville B. Cox, 47; Liberia Mission, 48, 52 ; 
Pioneer Missionaries, 49 ; Commerce and Govern- 
ment, 50 ; Congo, Free State, 51 ; Reorganization 
of Mission Work, Bishops Taylor and Hartzell, 52 . 
Inhambane, Angola, 53 ; Madeira Islands, Rho_ 
desia, 54 ; Old Umtali, 55 ; How to Win, 55. 

American Indians, 14, 19, 33, 36, 38. 

Andrews, Edward G. 98. 

Appenzeller, H. G. 118. 

Baldwin, S. I,. 72. 

Bangs, Nathan. 21, 25, 124. 

Butler, William. 88, 98, 106. 

Caste System, 93. 

China : First Mission, 66, 72 ; Vastness of the Problem, 
67 ; The Gospel Invincible, 68 ; Native Christians, 
69 ; Boxer Rebellion, 71 ; Work of Maclay, Went- 
worth, Wiley, Gibson, and Baldwin, 72 ; First 
Convert, 72 ; Our Present Missions, 73 ; The New 
China, 73 ; Great Opportunities, 75. 

Collins, J. D. 66. 

Colored M. B. Church, 38. 

Colored Work, 19, 33, 37. 

Count, K. K. 83. 

Cox, Melville B. 19, 47. 

Crews, G. B. 73. 

Davison, J. C. no. 

Dempster, John. 59. 

143 



144 Index 

Domestic Work : Bohemian and Hungarian, 43 ; Chi- 
nese 44 ; English-speaking, 19, 34 ; Finnish, 43 ; 
French, 13, 19, 43; German, 41, 76; Italian, 43; 
Japanese, 35, 44 ; Korean, 44 ; Norwegian and Dan- 
ish, 42, 78; Polish, 43; Portuguese, 43; Spanish, 
43, 122 ; Swedish, 42, 77 ; Welsh. 43. 

Europe: Converts Among Immigrants, 76; Intro- 
duction of Methodism, 77; Influence on State 
Churches, 79 ; Formation of Annual Conferences, 
80 ; Bulgaria, 81 ; Turkish Massacres, 82 ; Sum- 
mary of Work, 83. 

Evangelization Before Civilization, 15, 50. 

Famines, 96. 

Farrington, Sophronia. 49. 

Finley, James B. 20. 

First Foreign Mission, 47. 

First Home Mission, 43. 

Foreign Work : Angola, 53 ; Argentina, 60, 63 ; Bengal, 
97 ; Bolivia, 65 ; Bombay, 97 ; Borneo, 102 ; Brazil, 
60 ; Bulgaria, 83 ; Burma, 97, 99 ; Central China, 
72 ; Central Provinces, 97 ; Chile, 65 ; Congo Free 
State, 51 ; Denmark, 78 ; Ecuador, 65 ; Finland, 81 ; 
Foochow, 66, 73 ; France, 122 ; Germany, 77 ; 
Hinghua, 73; Japan, no, 115; Java, 102; Korea, 
118; Liberia, 48, 52; Madeira Islands, 54; Malay- 
sia, 97, 100 ; Mexico, 106 ; North China, 72 ; North 
India, 97 ; Northwest India, 97 ; Norway, 78 ; Pan- 
ama, 65 ; Paraguay, 61 ; Peru, 65 ; Philippines, 97, 
102 ; Portuguese East Africa, '53 ; Rhodesia, 55 ; 
Russia, 81; South India, 97; South Japan, 115; 
Sumatra, 102; Sweden, 78 ; Switzerland, 80; Uru- 
guay, 62 ; West China, 73. 

Fritz, W. G. 103. 

General Conference, 10, 13, 17, 25, 28, 38, 59. 

General Missionary Committee, 25, 31, 64. 

Gibson, Otis. 72. 



Index 145 

Goodwin, F. A. 99. 

Goucher, John F. 117. 

Growth, Iyaw of the Kingdom, 7 ; Missionary, 8, 12, 
14, 17, 19, 23, 32, 39, 45, 53, 66, 73, 80, 85, 88, 97, 
101, 109, 115, 120. 

Harris, M. C. no. 

Hart, V. C. 72. 

Hartzell, Joseph. 52. 

Haven, Gilbert. 106. 

Hedstrom, Olaf G. 42, 77. 

Humphrey, J. I,. 88, 98. 

Hurst, John F. 100. 

India and Malaysia : The Field, 86 ; Duff and Durbin, 
87; Butler, Humphrey and Pierce, Sepoy Rebel- 
lion, Providential Openings, 88; India Mission 
Conference, Opening of Garhwal, Bishop Tho- 
burn, Schools and Orphanages, Press, W. F. M. S., 
90 ; Rural Population, 92 ; Caste System, 93 ; 
Evangelistic Movement, 95 ; Famines and Chris- 
tianity, 96 ; Spread of the Work, New Conferences, 
97; Bishop Taylor's Work, 98; Burma Mission, 
Church Organized at Rangoon, 99 ; Malaysian Mis- 
sion, Bishop Hurst, 100 ; Arrival of Missionaries at 
Singapore Foreseen in Dream, W. F. Oldham, 101 ; 
Borneo, Java, Sumatra, and Philippines, 102 ; Sup- 
port of Native Ministry, Population of Southern 
Asia, 104. 

Italy : Revolt Against Papal Domination, 84 ; Evan- 
gelistic, Educational, and Publication Work, 85. 

Jacoby, Ludwig S. 41, 77. 

Japan : First Missionaries, Rapid Advance of Na- 
tion, no; First Converts, First Decade of 
Work, Native Ministry a Leading Feature of 
Mission, Persecution, 112; Period of Popularity, 
113; Reaction, 114; New Century Era, Student 
Evangelistic Movement, 114; Formation of An- 

10 



146 Index 

nual Conferences, Rapid Growth of Work, Church 
Union, 115. 

Kidder, Daniel P. 59. 

Kim, A Preacher Arrested. 120. 

Korea: Battle Ground of Russo-Japanese War, 116; 
Attention of Our Church Drawn to Work in 1883, 
John F. Goucher Active in Work, Appointment of 
Maclay, Scranton, and Appenzeller, 117; Medical 
Work, 118; Work of Converts, Devotion of Na- 
tive Preachers, 119. 

Languages and Dialects, 40, 122. 

Larsson, J. P. JJ . 

Lee, Jason and Daniel. 34. 

Lewis, Spencer. 73. 

Livingstone, David. 52. 

Long, Albert L. 83. 

Lowry, H. H. 72. 

Luering, H. L. E. 102. 

Maclay, R. S. 72, 108, 117. 

Massacres, 71, 82. 

Martin, Thomas H. 103. 

McKendree, William. 11. 

McLaughlin, J. L. 103. 

Medical Work, 75, 91, 118. 

Merrill, Stephen M. 108. 

Methodism, A Missionary Movement, 9. 

Methodist Church of Japan, 115. 

Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 38. 

Mexico : Experiment of Maxmilian, Work of the 
American and Foreign Christian Union, First 
Mission, William Butler, 106; Condition in Re- 
public, Persecution by Roman Catholic Church, 
107 ; Property Purchased, 108 ; A Generation of 
Work, 109. 

Missionary Growth. See Growth. 

Missionary Society: Auxiliary Societies, 21 ; Board of 



Index 147 

Managers, 26,31, 45; Disbursements, 23, 29, 33; 
Expense, 11, 29: First President, 11 ; First Paid 
Secretary, 25 ; Forward Movement, 28 ; Income, 
11, 13, 23, 29, 32; Officers and Clerks, 30; Organ- 
ization, 10, 16; Peoriodicals, 29; Purpose, 11; 
Vision of Founders, 14, 123 ; Young Peoples' 
Work, 21, 28. 

Nast, William. 41, 77. 

Native Christians, 69, 119. 

Native Ministry, 112, 121. 

New Fields, Providential Openings, 53, 99, 122. 

Oldham, W. F. 101. 

Open Door Emergency Commission, 28. 

Oregon, Opening of. 34. 

Parker, Edwin W. 98. 

Persecution, 60, 71, 82, 107, 119. 

Peterson, Olaf P. 77. 

Pierce, R. 88. 

Pitts, Fountain E. 59. 

Prayer-meetings, Missionary. 22. 

Press, 24, 63, 75, 85, 90, 109. 

Population Southern Asia, 104. 

Prettyman, Wesley. 82. 

Ramsey, Sir Henry. 90. • 

Roman Catholic Church, 58, 60, 84, 103, 107. 

Schools and Colleges, 63, 65, 75, 90, 109, 115. 

Scran ton, William B. 118. 

Self-supporting Missions, 53, 63, 98, 104. 

Soper, Julius, no. 

South America : Compared With North America, 57 ; 
Roman Catholic Church, 58; First Missionaries, 
Buenos Ayres, Rio Janeiro, 59 ; Persecution, 60 ; 
Montevideo, 62 ; Schools, Press, Self-supporting 
Missions. 63 ; Transit Fund, 64 ; Ecuador and 
Panama, 65. 

Spaulding, Justin. 59. 



148 Index 

Student Evangelistic Movement of Japan, 114. 

Stuntz, Homer C. 103. 

Taylor, William. 52, 63, 98. 

Thoburn, Isabella. 91. 

Thoburn, James M. 90, 98, 99, 102. 

Thomson, Edward. 39, 90. 

Todd, E. S. 72. 

Transit and Building Fund, 63. 

Travel, Primitive Methods. 20. 

Vernon, Iyeroy M. 84. 

Wentworth, Erastus. 72. 

Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, 46. 

Wheeler, Iy. N. 72. 

White, M. C. 64. 

Wiley, Isaac W. 72. 

Willerup, C. 77. 

Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, 31, 90, 109, 115. 

Woman's Home Missionary Society, 31. 

Wood, Thomas. 65. 

World Wide Missions, 29. 

Young Peoples' Work, 21. 



APPENDIX 

Average Annual Contributions by Decades 134 

Geography of the Society's Missions 139 

Domestic Missions. 

Foreign Missions — Western Hemisphere. 
Eastern 
" " Northern " 

Southern 
Increase in Communicants in Foreign Missions.. 135 

" " Foreign Missionaries 135 

" Income by Decennial years 133 

" " " " " periods 134 



Index 149 

Increase in Income of W. F. M. S. in Decennial 
Years 138 

Increase in Income of W. F. M. S. in Decennial 
Periods 138 

Increase in Income of W. H. M. S. in Decennial 
Years 138 

Increase in Income of W. H. M. S. in Decennial 
Periods 139 

languages Spoken in Society's Missions— Africa, 
China, Europe, India and Burma, Malaysia, 
Philippines, Japan, Korea, South America, 
United States,, Summary 140 

Number of Colleges and Students 137 

11 " High and Day Schools and Students. . 137 
" Hospitals and Medical Missionaries . . 138 

" Native Preachers and Workers 136 

" Theological and Sunday-schools and 
scholars 137 

Summary of Events — 

First Decade 129 

Second Decade 129 

Third Decade 130 

Fourth Decade 130 

Fifth Decade 131 

Sixth Decade 131 

Seventh Decade 132 

Eighth Decade 132 

Ninth Decade 132 

Value of Property in Foreign Fields 136 



JUL 29 1907 



I IRRARY OF CONGRESS J^l 

021 181 108 






